


ELEGY/INVICTUS

by bigmoneygator



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - No Powers, Childhood Friends, F/M, Love Triangles, M/M, millennial angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-31
Updated: 2016-06-03
Packaged: 2018-07-11 10:39:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 22,609
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7045039
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bigmoneygator/pseuds/bigmoneygator
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>A project about the futility of comparison, told through the struggle to choose between two good things. A lesson in the art of yearning and the pain of decision.</i>
</p>
<p>when you re-meet your high school sweetheart and everything's changed.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I haven't completed a piece in three years and I'm pretty excited that I manged to get this done. Some things to consider: I don't write an MCU Clint. Never have, probably never will. I really only connect with 616 Clint, particularly Fraction's run -- hence Kate and Lucky. I also don't write Steve as a paragon and beacon of virtue and sweetness. He's a real person, let him make real mistakes. This story is actually completely done, but I'm too lazy to edit it all at once, so I'm putting it up in chunks.
> 
> In less story related news, I don't operate under the same handle or tumblr url anymore, but you can still find me at [bigmoneygator](http://bigmoneygator.tumblr.com). Please direct all hate to the garbage can.

Bucky Barnes has been working in kitchens since before he could drive.

It was just a fluke, really. His mother knew someone who's family owned a restaurant and needed a busboy that would work under the table and she needed to find something to occupy her son so he would stop fucking around with the kids who smoked pot and skipped class. It only marginally worked; his mother, in her infinite naivety and bottomless well of trust, could not have imagined the kinds of people that work in the back of house at a restaurant. No matter what the smiling, competent waitstaff look like, there are always miscreants with rap sheets or AA chips or good old-fashioned tempers in the kitchen.

Kitchens, Bucky has learned, are like the Statue of Liberty for the socially stunted and emotionally volatile. The back of house to him is what the United States was for his mother. Give them your poor, tired, hungover, red-eyed and twitching masses, and they'll give you a plate of food with only minimal grousing.

Kitchens are also the only place Bucky's been able to work since he lost his arm in a motorcycle accident. Surprisingly, there aren't a lot of businesses that are willing to hire a one-armed twenty-something with no experience other than working a saute pan, no matter how good his prosthetic is. He tried Whole Foods, but the only position he could work with one arm was cashier – and there is definitely a reason he's worked back of house his entire life. There was no way he could deal with that many _people_.

He found his current job on a whim, visiting his friend Matt, who had moved to New Haven from New York to manage a pretty popular music venue. Natalya's was tucked into a corner off a main drag and he only found the damn place because he had gotten hopelessly lost trying to locate a noodle bar that everyone he had met was raving about. The food was amazing; it had the same country, make every penny count, honest immigrant feeling to it that all of his mother's food had, and he could hear Russian swears floating out from the back. The pastry case was a sight to be seen, and people kept coming in and buying entire cakes. The woman at the counter wore a stained apron and a white bandana over her insanely red hair, and she spoke to her customers in clipped, strained tones in between running back and forth from the kitchen.

Bucky had seen restaurants that were short-handed before, but he had only rarely seen a restaurant with only one waitress and two people in the back. Bucky later found out that his first visit had come on a bad day; the other waiter had called in sick and the line cook had quit a week prior. It was probably why, when he approached the counter with his bill in hand and a charming smile on his face, he was able to convince Natasha to give him an interview on the spot.

The pay wasn't great. The hours were terrible, like they usually are when restaurants are still new and getting their feet under them. The people, though, were fucking great. Natasha let him take a bit of Romanian creative freedom with some of the food he was tasked with making. Clint, the pastry chef behind the case full of beautiful cakes and delicate Russian pastry, set Bucky up with a new roommate. After a few weeks of crashing on Matt's couch, he was grateful. He and Matt had never been _that_ close – just friends in passing. Bucky hadn't realized how much he actually hated his college buddy until he was forced to confront him in his underwear nearly every morning.

Sam was a cool roommate to have, and a quiet one. At the time, he was working on finishing up a master's in engineering at Southern, and he was out of the house most of the time. They split the second floor of a rambling old house on Orange, halfway between the pub and the creative arts high school. It was sort of run-down, and the heat didn't really work and there was no A/C, but when you climbed out onto the fire escape, you could see a huge chunk of the town and part of Yale. Bucky still lives there because the rent is dirt cheap, but Sam's moved out and Clint's moved in – which is good in the long run, because Bucky hadn't realized how much of the furniture in the apartment was Sam's until he left and Clint is an avid bulk-pickup scavenger.

Bucky knows his life isn't perfect.

Clint, who is slightly older but probably no wiser, says it's just a passing thing. When he was in his twenties, he was still roaming around the country, doing odd jobs to keep his head above water. At some point, he says, you get tired of what you're doing and you fix it, or you figure out that what you were doing was making you happy all along. Clint is the kind of guy that makes you wonder how he's still alive; he's got more scars than he has stories for, and bad luck sort of trails along after him wherever he goes. He makes the best of it – or at least, tries to. He's too old, he says, to be weighed down by the kind of sadness that bogged him down when he was younger. He says people are always carrying more than they can handle and everyone needs to learn the fine art of letting go.

Clint also smokes a _lot _of pot.__

__Bucky can't keep up with it after a veritable lifetime of smoking cigarettes, so when Clint is having a spliff as a nightcap, he cracks open a beer and they sit in the living room with Clint's dog and talk about the meaning of life._ _

__Their talks usually come around to Bucky and his bouts of existential woe. So far, he's figured out that he's thought his life was ending three previous times: when his childhood best friend moved away to go to art school in Chicago, when he lost his arm, and when his mother died. Every time, he's managed to make it through. Clint attributes this to strength of character, and reminds him that even though your late twenties are when you start realizing that you won't be young forever, you also realize that you have a lot of years before you're old, too. Bucky's sure that Sam would have contributed that life likes to punch you in the gut, but you have to be stronger than the thing that's trying to put you in the ground._ _

__Bucky misses Sam sometimes, but he'll never admit it._ _

__It's just a general malaise, anyway. Things keep happening and Bucky keeps hoping that whatever it was would be the last huge ordeal in his life, and it never is. There's always another bill he couldn't pay, another shitty day at work where Nat lost her temper, another failed attempt at socializing. It isn't sadness, really. Just … defeat. Pile after pile of things to sort through, with no end in sight. Maybe he should have just finished college like his mother wanted. Maybe then he wouldn't have one arm and live in a borderline flophouse with a divorced pastry chef who used to shoot alligators in the head for a living._ _

__Clint would say that looking backwards is no way to live, and Sam would say that Bucky is being a fatalist and that shit is for roaring twenties novelists, and Natasha would tell him that he could think whatever he likes as long as he finishes the dish in front of him._ _

__The problem, he's figuring out, is that he has no idea what _he_ would say. What he should say. What he should think or do or feel. His life has been framed by his circumstances and status for so long – Nadja's son, or the kid who lost his arm, or the guy who's mom died – that he has no idea who or what he should be. One of the waitresses, Kate, is even younger than him and she seems like she's suffering the same sort of trouble, but she handles it with grace and aplomb. He has no idea how she does it._ _

__So Bucky drinks with Clint and goes out with his friends from the restaurant and tries not to freak out when the rent is due. He goes to concerts at the place Matt manages and pays city prices for food and ignores his father's phone calls._ _

__He's doing fine, he thinks._ _

__Just fine._ _

____

*

Bucky's phone is ringing. And ringing. And _ringing_.

It's easily before noon. _Way_ before noon. In restaurant worker time, it might as well be the middle of the night. He groans, rolling over and fumbling around on his nightstand. There are two phones there, and the stirring next to him tells him that he's _definitely_ slept with Natasha again. Well, shit.

It's Clint, which is bizarre beyond measure. He's not entirely sure that his roommate isn't just being lazy and is in the next room, trying to get a rise out of Bucky for screwing the boss.

“Yep,” he says into the phone, voice hoarse with sleep.

“Hey, good, you're up,” Clint chatters. Bucky can hear the industrial mixer going in the background, and it dawns on him that Clint goes in early to make the day's bread and pastries. “Can you do me a favor?”

“Probably not,” Bucky grumbles. Natasha rolls over and flings her arm around his waist, dragging herself closer to him to press her lips to his neck. He shivers, pushing the phone further away so she can get to that sweet spot right behind his ear.

“I just need you to run down to Gateway and pick Kate up. I totally forgot – her car is in the shop and she has class in the morning on Tuesdays. I promised her I would do it and I completely spaced.”

“Dude, I'm not picking up your girlfriend,” Bucky says.

“She's not my girlfriend and you have more than an hour before her class gets out. Please? I'll do the dishes.”

Bucky pauses, reconsiders. Their sink is usually cluttered – two people who like to cook and bake from scratch living under one roof in a horribly small space will do that.

“For a week,” Bucky says. “And if you start whining, I'm gonna start throwing your bundt pans away.”

“Deal,” Clint says, breathing a sigh of relief. “She's at the main building and her class gets out at ten thirty. Please don't be late. She gets so angry when she has to wait.”

“Yeah, okay,” Bucky says. Nat's hand inches lower, brushing the tops of his boxers. “I gotta go.”

“Ten thirty.”

“I heard you.”

“Thanks, dude. I owe you.”

“Yep. Bye.” Bucky hangs up and turns around, throwing his arm around Natasha's neck. She hooks a leg over his hips and smiles.

“What was that?” she asks. Natasha has the uncanny ability to sound fully alert and awake no matter how much sleep she's gotten or how suddenly she's been roused.

“Clint needs me to pick Kate up from school.”

“Is he her dad?” Her eyebrows raise. Bucky shrugs, pushing a stray curl off of her forehead.

“Her car is in the shop or something,” he says idly, tucking her hair behind her ear. “We have some time.”

“Oh?” She smiles. Natasha has one of the greatest smiles Bucky's ever seen. It's something about how smooth the curves of her face are, how impassive her neutral expression is. When she smiles and she means it, it's a beautiful thing. She shoves him gently, laying him out flat on his back, and swings her leg over his hip to straddle him in one smooth motion.

The thing about Natasha is that once you get to know her and she decides she likes you, it doesn't take her long to show you casual affection. Brushing her hand across your back, straightening your collar, wiping something off your face. She does it to Clint, too – but Clint is smart enough to know that you shouldn't _return_ the gestures, because then it becomes a game in escalation. She'll raise the stakes to kisses on the cheek and lingering hugs, playing with your hair and laying her hand on your leg. And then, if you keep playing, she'll crawl into your lap and kiss you until you're out of breath and end up with her in your bed. Clint had assured Bucky that he was not the first idiot to wind up sleeping with Nat this way; Clint himself had almost wound up in the same situation, but he catches feelings too easily and pried himself out from underneath her before things got out of hand. Bucky has no such compunctions, and has only hooked up with one other person since he lost his arm – so the situation, though not ideal, is at least mutually beneficial.

Bucky had hoped to leave himself enough time to shower before he had to go get Kate, but, true to form, Natasha took her sweet time and he has to rush to get his arm on and slap his hair in a ponytail. Nat stays behind with promises to leave some fresh water out for Lucky and lock the door behind her.

Kate is standing at the corner when Bucky screeches to a halt next to the massive new structure that the community college built a few years back. He rolls down the window and waves.

“Hey,” he calls.

“You're late,” she says, snapping gum as she yanks the door open. “Class got out ten minutes ago.”

“It's ten thirty-two,” Bucky says, pointing at the stereo.

“Yeah,” Kate agrees, buckling herself in. She kicks at the pile of cans and empty cigarette packs on the floor. “This is disgusting.”

“Thanks,” he says, trying not to roll his eyes as he waits to pull back out into traffic.

“Can you put your cigarette out?” Kate asks, wrinkling her nose.

“Oh, come on.” He shoots her a look as he pulls off the curb. “I'm almost done. This is my first one of the day.”

“And I'm a twenty-one year old girl who's life is in your hands,” she says, snapping her gum again.

“Jesus Christ, Kate,” he snorts. He throws the butt out the window anyway. He kind of likes Kate, and Kate kind of likes him. But he also thinks that she lives to give people a hard time. “Where am I taking you, anyway?”

“Your place,” she says, playing with a clip on her messenger bag. “I like your kitchen table. I focus better there.”

“Not just because there's an endless supply of men's hoodies to steal or anything, right?”

“And not just because of the dog, either.” She grins over at him and he laughs. She's okay sometimes. She fiddles with his radio and the A/C. “It kinda stinks in here.”

“I smoke in the car,” he says, checking traffic at a stop sign. “Obviously.”

“Yeah, but it stinks like sex and weed in here, too.” She looks at him pointedly, gauging to see how uncomfortable she's made him. He won't give her the satisfaction, of course, but he can tell she wants to know who he's fooling around with. He only knows maybe three or four women who would consider sleeping with him (Kate counts in that number only when she's drunk enough to tell him that she would “break his spine out back” if she ever got the chance, which is sort of flattering in a weird way), so it's not like the pool of options is huge or anything.

“Just my natural musk,” he says, glancing at her sidelong as they drive by the arts high school. A teacher is outside spray-painting a set piece, wearing a mask. He's got great biceps, which is the only reason Bucky even looks that way or notices at all.

“I'm gonna figure out who you're boning one way or another,” Kate says, pulling out her phone. Her fingers fly across the keyboard. “And I'm telling Clint you were late.”

“I was _not_ late,” he insists, turning into the driveway that leads to the small parking lot behind the house. “You got out early and you're taking it out on me.”

“If you really cared, you would have been there early. What if someone tried to kidnap me? What would you tell Clint?”

“To pick up his own girlfriend next time?”

“He's not my boyfriend,” she says, unclipping her seatbelt and climbing out of Bucky's car.

His eyes roll skyward. Sure. Clint and Kate aren't dating and he's not sleeping with Natasha, and there are no colonial cemeteries under the town green and Yale students are really great, interesting people. He slips out of the car and lopes around front to catch up with Kate, who's already waiting by the front door, tapping her foot impatiently.

“Relax,” he tells her, fumbling with his keys.

Before she can quip off something snarky, the door opens. Natasha looks a little surprised, wearing the emergency outfit she had stashed in Bucky's underwear drawer and a pair of ugly flip-flops.

Kate's eyes go wide.

Nat laughs and scoots around Bucky. “See you guys later,” she says coolly, flicking her fingers in a kind of wave.

“Yep,” Bucky sighs, watching her go over to her little red car, parked just a bit up the road.

Kate waits until she drives off to punch Bucky as hard as she possibly can in his good arm.

“Ow, what the fuck?” he demands, hustling her into the building.

“I can't _believe_ you're sleeping with our boss,” she hisses.

“If you're not dating Clint, I'm not sleeping with Nat,” he says, kicking the door shut behind them. He gestures to the stairs. “Simple as that.”

She starts up them, but the look on her face is still triumphant. “I told you I would find out.”

“Nat walks Lucky for Clint sometimes, you know. She has a key.”

“So do I,” she says, “but I'm not bumping uglies with you.”

“Kate, come on. Let it go. It's not a big deal.”

“It's not?” She turns and looks at him on the landing between flights of stairs. “You're screwing our boss.”

“And you're dating a guy fifteen years older than you,” he says, shooing her up the last stairs before his floor. “If you want to argue moral superiority, find higher ground.”

“Isn't it weird, though?” she asks, waiting for him to get in front so he can unlock the door to the apartment. “I mean, when she yells at you at work?”

“Isn't it weird thinking about how your boyfriend was jerking off to Courtney Love when you were shitting in diapers?”

“He's not my boyfriend,” she says again.

“Okay,” he says, swinging the door open. He gestures for her to step inside. “And I'm not screwing the boss.”

She glowers at him and drops her bag next to the door, going off to find Lucky on the couch and scratch his ears. “Hey, buddy,” she says, kneeling down so she can kiss the dog's nose. “At least you're not a lying sack of shit. Right? Aren't you the best boy in the world?”

Lucky squints his good eye at her and licks her cheek, tail thumping against the couch cushions.

“Whatever,” Bucky says, rolling his eyes as he heads into the kitchen. “I'm going to brew some coffee. If accepting gifts from a lying crap-sack isn't beneath you, there'll be a cup for you.”

“I hate the coffee you guys buy. And why don't you ever have any half and half to put in it?”

“Clint and I drink it black,” Bucky reminds her, peeking out from around the corner. “And if you want to start buying some cream and leaving it here, there's a Gourmet Heaven literally two blocks away.”

“I'm not here enough. It would go bad, and then you'd never throw it away, and then I would put it in my coffee and die of food poisoning.” She flops onto the couch with Lucky, fiddling with the remote for their battered television set. “Did you guys get cable yet?”

“Nah. Still just Netflix. But cable is another thing you can pay for, if you're so interested in having it.”

“No thanks.”

Bucky sighs to himself and goes back to measuring out coffee and water into their aging machine. It's the same coffee pot he had bought during his one and only semester spent living at college, and it's held together with fluorescent purple duct tape and sheer stubbornness. Natasha hates it. Much like Kate, she also hates the brand of coffee they buy – but Bucky is insistent that there's nothing wrong with Costco brand. Nat likes her coffee brewed with a little chicory, and butter and coconut oil blended into it, which is the grossest thing Bucky's ever tasted. He used to think that you could tell a lot about a person by how they took their coffee, but he's starting to think that taste in coffee is just an arbitrary thing – much like everything else in life.

He waits in the kitchen for the coffee to finish brewing, listening to the sound of whatever Kate's put on. It's entirely in a foreign language, so without the subtitles, Bucky has no idea what he's listening to. Without his mother to talk to, his Romanian is starting to get weak, while his Russian keeps getting better thanks to Nat. Sometimes he gets a little melancholy, thinking about how the person his mother had left behind was almost completely gone. Obscured by the litany of shit that's happening and rent by a careless merge on a highway.

He pours himself a mug of coffee and thinks that maybe it's too early for him to be thinking about all this depressing shit. He walks over to the window, noting that Kate is watching a documentary on sushi, and opens it to climb out onto the fire escape so he can have a cigarette.

He's not in love with Nat.

Sometimes the realization that he devotes a lot of time to a person that he doesn't even love, who doesn't love him back, hits him out of nowhere and he's forced to look at himself through a different sort of lens.

He sighs, clouds of cigarette smoke curling upwards and disappearing into the hazy gray of the darkening sky. Briefly, oddly, he thinks about that art teacher and his set design. He hopes that the piece is finished before the rain starts up. What a shame, he thinks, for all that hard work to go to waste.

*****

Bucky runs into Sam at the gym sometimes. It's always sort of nice to see the guy; they spent the better part of a year and a half living together. Sam is incredibly smart, and he used to have Bucky quiz him to help study. Bucky loves numbers, and he would've probably majored in math if he ever finished up his college. Engineering degrees are no joke when it comes to algebra, and Bucky sort of mooched a free education off of Sam's notes.

Today, Sam breezes in and takes the bench next to Bucky without making much of a fuss. Bucky nods at his former roommate but doesn't take his earbuds out until he's done with his reps.

“Hey, asshole,” Sam says, smiling as he selects dumbbells.

“What's happening, jerk?” Bucky responds, putting his own dumbbells back on the rack. “How's your big fancy job with the suit and everything?”

“Can't complain,” he says, shrugging. “How's the potato jockeying?”

“Less filled with root vegetables than you'd think,” he says, face relaxing into a nonplussed expression. “You still seeing that girl?”

“Sharon? Jesus, no. She's dating this other guy. Super nice, though. Turns out I like him better than I liked her.”

“Weird. Friends with your ex's new thing.”

“I've been through worse.” Sam shrugs as he settles onto the bench. “Seeing anybody?”

“I see plenty of people,” Bucky jokes. “All the time. I'm seeing you right now.”

“Clever.” Sam snorts. “You wanna spot me on my presses later?”

“Sure.” Bucky nods. “I'll be on the strings.”

“Cool.”

Bucky wanders off to clip a new attachment to his workout prosthetic. The thing had set him back a veritable fortune, but it was one of the best investments he'd ever made. Certainly more reliable than his piece of shit old Civic, and only slightly less useful. He's kind of glad that Sam's shown up; he always feels awkward and weird asking a member of the gym's staff to come and spot him, even if that's technically part of their job.

Sam is one of those people that Bucky doesn't quite know how he got lucky enough to meet. Clint knows a bunch of people, and every single one of them can fill some need that you have. Delivery of weed at two in the morning on a Monday? Clint has a guy for that. Car broke down on the highway? Sure thing. Need a roommate, or someone to come haul something out of your house, or some plumbing looked at? Clint's got this. Bucky and Natasha have determined that this is a kind of defense mechanism of Clint's. Like maybe if he proves that he's useful enough times, people will keep him in their lives. So of course when Bucky needed a place to stay and mentioned it to Clint, he had three prospects lined up barely an hour later.

Sam was the only person who didn't seem like he might murder Bucky in his sleep to wear as a skin suit, and Sam decided that he liked Bucky enough to let him stay. Sam is kind of Bucky's antithesis: clean, orderly, efficient. A really great boyfriend who believes in monogamy and unexpected gifts. All of his old school notes were color-coded, and he put tape on the fridge to denote who's shelves were whose and a second suction-cup basket in the shower for Bucky's things. He threw away his contacts on the first of every month and changed razor blades every two weeks. Bucky didn't know how the fuck one person could _be_ so together. It was kind of nice for him to have someone to copy at first; he had moved directly out of his father's place into the real world, and it showed.

Of course, there were arguments. Bucky had a bad habit of running out of shampoo or shaving cream and just using Sam's without asking. He didn't clean up after himself and left coffee mugs filled with cigarette butts out on the fire escape. Just normal roommate shit, he had since realized, even if he had threatened to take a baseball bat to Sam's beloved Hyundai on more than one occasion.

After their work out, they get smoothies from the snack bar and shoot the shit. Sam is trying to get back into the dating scene, but it's harder than he remembers. Bucky is close to actively planning to move to Greenland to avoid paying back his paltry student loans. So really, it's business as usual.

“We should go get drinks soon,” Sam determines, stirring his kale and lemon slop with the straw. “I kinda miss Clint. I don't think I've seen him in ages.”

“Well, he looks the same,” Bucky laughs. “Slightly less pathetic, maybe. I think he's dating Kate.”

“Little baby Kate?” Sam raises his eyebrows.

“Oh yeah. They won't admit it, but it's sort of obvious.”

“Alright, I guess I can dig it. Sort of weird, but I've dated ladies older than me.”

“By sixteen years?”

“No, but I guess the concept is the same. As long as they're happy, right?” Sam shrugs. “I can't be assed with this dating stuff anymore, you know? Thought I might've had it all figured out with Share. But, hey. We all make mistakes.”

“Blonde, pretty mistakes,” Bucky says, nodding.

“I'll drink to that,” Sam says, raising his smoothie.

Bucky taps his plastic cup against Sam's, grinning. “I know you're a real grown up with a job and everything, but Monday is the only night I can go out. Nat's is closed.”

“Oh, right. Well, that means you can drag Clint and Tasha along, right?”

“Yeah, that's true.” Bucky shrugs. “Monday, then. Christy's?”

“You just really love walking there, huh?”

“Can't get a DUI for it, right?”

“Sure. Monday. I'll text you.”

“Deal.”

Bucky sort of hates how the human interaction does him good; he's trying to be a morose hermit, and here his extroversion has to go and get in the damn way.

*****

Bucky's already had a little too much to drink. He can admit this to himself, he figures, and he surreptitiously orders plan tonic waters with lime so it looks like he can keep up with Natasha and Clint, who are throwing back vodka like it's their job. Kate has class early, so she's just sipping on iced tea of the non-Long Island variety. Bucky is getting a little hungry and he hopes that maybe after Sam gets there and stays for fifteen minutes before being too grown up and needing to sleep, he can at least convince Clint to go to Mamoun's for some falafel.

Clint spots Sam first, waving enthusiastically. To Bucky's surprise, Sharon is trailing him, followed by a tall blonde guy who looks agonizingly familiar. It only takes a few seconds of hazy, stomach-clenching confusion before something clicks in Bucky's brain. The guy following Sharon, holding hands with her and looking shy as hell, looks exactly like his childhood best friend from Brooklyn.

Logically, it can't be Steve because Steve moved to Chicago and they lost touch. Steve was also a short, scrawny kid with a bad haircut, and this guy is – Jesus, this guy is huge. Tall and cut and broad in the shoulders, and covered in tattoos from throat to wrist. He has stretched ears and stubble – Steve was always scared of needles and couldn't grow a beard if he tried.

Before Sam can even say hello, though, the huge guy is letting go of Sharon's hand and practically elbowing her out of the way so he can rush up to Bucky and throw his arms around his neck, saying “Holy shit, Bucky” over and over and over again.

Bucky starts laughing, hysterical giggles working their way out of his throat as he's literally lifted up out of his chair and plopped haphazardly onto his feet. He returns the death grip of a hug that Steve is squeezing him in, trying not to let any tears spill out of his eyes. They're so engrossed in hugging and laughing and slapping each other's backs that they've completely lost track of anyone else; not their friends and certainly not the strangers in the bar, who are no doubt all staring at this exchange like there's a fight about to break out.

They finally pull apart, but their hands linger on each other's shoulders, smiling like they just can't believe their luck. And really, they can't. What are the fucking odds? They haven't seen each other in at least eight years, maybe more. Things like this don't just _happen_. They're reserved for movies and books, works of fiction where everything turns out just swell in the end.

But here they are. Staring at each other and laughing like crazy people.

Finally, Clint clears his throat.

“Now kiss,” Kate says.

Everyone laughs at that, and Bucky and Steve finally peel themselves away from each other – but Steve keeps his arm around Bucky, which is something of a weird feeling. Back when they were kids, it was always Bucky holding onto Steve.

“So, this is my best friend from Brooklyn,” Bucky says, pointing up at Steve. “Steve Rogers.”

“Oh man, is this garbage can kid?” Clint asks.

“You told them that story?” Steve hisses, socking Bucky in the ribs gently.

“I think Clint's heard every story I have about you, honestly,” Bucky laughs, ducking out from under Steve's arm. “Fuck, dude, what are you _doing_ here?”

“I could ask you the same thing,” Steve says.

Natasha leans around Bucky to offer her hand. “I'm Natasha, Bucky's boss and current best friend.” She smiles in that really pretty way of hers, giving Steve's hand a bone-crushing shake. “Sorry he's so rude, but I'm sure you already knew that.”

“I remember that, yeah,” Steve laughs. He shakes his hand out when Nat lets it go. “You've got some grip there.”

She just smiles.

“So you met Nat,” Bucky says. “And that's my roommate Clint and our coworker Kate.”

“All I am to you is a coworker?” Kate asks, eyebrows furrowed. “I can't believe it.”

Sharon lets out an uncomfortable laugh. She and Sam had been a relatively stable, happy couple, and their breakup had only proved to Bucky that not even a good thing is safe from a crappy ending. She's sidling up closer to Steve, smiling shyly as Sam parks himself next to Clint so they can catch up.

“I guess you know my girlfriend,” Steve says, twining his fingers with Sharon's.

“We've met a few times,” Bucky laughs. “Hey, Share.”

“Hi, Buck,” she says. “How's the garden, huh?”

He can't believe that Sharon remembers the little herb garden he had tried to grow when Sam was still living in the flat. She had, of course, helped him pick out the best varieties to grow in pots and directed what could live where. The whole thing had been a bust; Bucky is _not_ good at growing things, and the entire side of the building is in shadow no matter what.

“Incredibly dead.” He glances back to see if Natasha wants to be engaged in this conversation as well, but she and Kate are listening to Clint tell one of his circus stories or something, and Bucky is slightly relieved. He doesn't want to have to start treating her like his girlfriend just because Sharon is here and even though they're friendly, she always somehow manages to leave him with the impression that he's a piece of shit. “I tried, you know?”

“Aw, that's sorta sad,” she says, smiling apologetically. “I liked that garden.”

“I would've loved it. But them's the breaks.” Bucky shrugs. “So, uh. How did you two meet?”

“Well,” Steve starts, glancing at Sharon with that big, gorgeous smile he's always had. “Sharon came through the school I teach at to give a little talk about physical security, and we got to talking and it turns out we have a lot in common. So here we are.”

“You're a fucking _teacher_?” Bucky snorts. “No way.”

“I am. At the arts high school,” Steve laughs. “Studio art, mostly. I teach set design for the theater department, too.”

The man spray-painting on the sidewalk comes to mind again. Bucky can't really accurately recall what the man looked like – there were definitely tattoos and biceps – and he wonders if he hadn't already seen Steve and just didn't realize it. Small fucking world.

Sharon lets go of Steve's hand, obviously not too keen on listening to Bucky and Steve catch up on the last decade. “I'm gonna go grab a drink,” she says, pecking Steve on the cheek. “You want anything?”

“I'm fine with water,” he says, giving her a sort of brush on her collarbone. It doesn't look cheesy or stupid – it looks romantic and intimate, and a small pang of jealousy pings up in Bucky's gut. He tamps it down and tries to focus on how stupid in love the look on Steve's face is when he watches her go up to the bar.

“So you still don't drink, huh?” Bucky teases.

“I definitely _do_ drink, but I have to wake up for work tomorrow, my friend.” Steve grins. “I mean, what about you? What do you do?”

“Oh – well, I actually still work in a kitchen,” Bucky says, laughing. “I'm a line cook, though. I work at Nat's restaurant. It's really a great place, you should swing by. Natalya's. Russian food.”

“I feel like your mother isn't too happy with you working in a Russian restaurant,” Steve laughs.

Bucky feels his face fall. It makes sense – Steve has no idea that Nadja died. He couldn't. He hadn't even been in this timezone for it.

“Ma actually passed away. When I was just about to turn twenty. Uterine cancer. It was kind of a mess.”

“Oh, wow.” Steve looks … crushed. Crestfallen. Like his own mother was dead all over again. “Oh, Buck. I'm so sorry, man. That's awful.”

“Hey, it's – well. You know how it is. It happened. And it sucks. But I'm alright.” Bucky waves his hand.

“I know this is off the subject and probably totally rude but – arm? Is that what I think it is?” Steve grimaces a little as he points to Bucky's prosthetic. “What did you do?”

“Oh, well – so I was on my bike and this SUV cut me off and clipped me, and I got snagged on their wheel-well and my arm got crushed in the axle. Also a mess.” Bucky wiggles the fingers of his prosthetic, shrugging. “But at least I got a replacement. It's kinda cool.”

“Geez,” Steve snorts. “I leave you alone for five minutes.”

“In my defense – it was closer to ten years. And you grew, like, a foot. You're taller than me. It's not right.”

Steve laughs and looks like he has something to say in return, but Sharon comes back with his water and a glass of wine in her hand. The way they smile at each other – it's like the sun comes out of each other's asses or something. Bucky figures they've probably only been dating for a few months. After a while, those sorts of looks tend to stop.

“So, Share – still doing the cop thing?” Bucky asks, trying to ease some of the awkwardness of her being back.

“Oh, yeah. I'm the educational liaison now. So that's why I was in Steve's school.” She smiles over at him, some of that sunshine she's bestowing on Steve hitting Bucky full in the face.

“I really just can't believe it,” Steve says, shaking his head. “How long have you been here, Buck?”

“I don't know – three years? Two? A while. It was right after I lost the arm.” Bucky shrugs. “You can't have been here that long.”

“Eight months, maybe. I got the offer to teach and I didn't want to stay in Chicago anymore. I kinda missed the East Coast.” Steve slings his arm around Sharon, so casual and sweet. Bucky feels another pang of jealousy that he has to talk himself out of.

The night goes in on a relatively normal fashion. Sam leaves soon after he gets there because he has to wake up early, and Sharon and Steve don't stay much longer than that. Steve gives Bucky his phone number and makes him send a text on the spot so Steve has his. He leaves with a promise that they'll hang out and catch up for real soon. Bucky abandons the tonic water for whiskey and gets so drunk he forgets about falafel but invites Natasha back to his place for the night.

She won't have sex with him when either of them are drunk; sort of a personal rule of hers, but she'll change into one of his t-shirts and let him lay with his head in her lap while they watch television. She plays with his hair while they watch old shows in black and white on Amazon Prime, canned laughter going on over the stupidest of jokes, braiding swirls into his scalp while he stares at the screen and absorbs almost nothing.

Natasha does _not_ ask what's wrong when someone is in a bad mood. It's a European thing, Bucky knows. His mother had to train herself to smile at strangers and chirp “How are you?” at her job as a secretary. Germans, Russians, Romanians – they don't ask how you're feeling or why you're feeling that way. They just let you stew in it, deal with it on your own.

So Natasha sits there and lets Bucky be sad and wounded, and he watches the television with his one hand idly on her neck, and before he falls asleep, she presses a kiss to the corner of his mouth.

It's way more depressing than it should be.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Steve breathes out a small sigh. “Listen. I just wanted to say … About what happened when we were younger, you know --”
> 
> “Hey, woah.” Bucky puts his hands up. He's absolutely not prepared to have this conversation. Not prepared by a long-shot. He's been actively trying to think about _not_ having this conversation. Maybe not having it ever. “Let me enjoy your company a few more times before we start talking about … _that_. Okay?”

Bucky helps Clint get the bread going on Saturdays, so he leaves the restaurant at three. This particular Saturday, he heads home to shower and then walks down to the Snack Bar, where he's supposed to be meeting Steve for milkshakes and some time to catch up. He feels oddly self-conscious as he heads in, tugging at the hem of his black t-shirt and realizing that he's gone for black pants too. Like a God damn hipster undertaker or something.

“Hey!” Steve waves from a corner seat. He's got a massive banana split in front of him and he looks even less like the version of himself that Bucky remembers in the bright light pouring in from the glass facade. Bucky is not used to being the less attractive one of their duo; Steve totally eclipses him now. Like all the great things about his insides are finally on the outside, and Bucky's grown lackluster from being a shitty person for all these years.

He goes over and parks himself in the seat across from Steve, immediately stealing the cherry off of one of the piles of whipped cream on the split.

“Wow,” Steve laughs, poking one of the piles of ice cream with his spoon. “I guess some things never change.”

“Nope,” Bucky says, smiling. “Not in the least.”

“Good thing I was going to see if you wanted to split it with me.” Steve slides an extra spoon across the table. “I only realized how big the damn thing was _after_ I ordered it.”

“Oh, God, Rogers,” Bucky laughs. “If you're going to live in New Haven, you have to be able to eat one of these things by yourself. It's almost a law.”

“I don't think I should have all that sugar and fat.” Steve shakes his head. “I kinda work out now.”

“You'd have to, with arms like that.” Bucky smiles and takes a bite out of the chocolate scoop of ice cream. “I still don't believe it's you under there. I thought you hated needles.”

“I caught the bug while I was in college, you know?” Steve shrugs, pointing to an anchor and compass combo on the inside of his left bicep. “I sat for that one and I just … well. I mean, look at me.” He tugs down his collar and offers up the tops of his hands – the only really clean part of him, except for the words 'STAY GOLD' tattooed on his knuckles. “That's one good thing about being an artist. No one really ever expects you to look professional. Even at the school. They really only cared about your experience and how well you threw together lesson plans.”

“A teacher. Man, you really sold out.”

“Well, what about you? What happened to Brooklyn College? All that 'sending rockets to the moon' stuff you used to want to do?”

Bucky shrugs, poking at the sundae in front of them. “After mom died – I don't know. Cooking is what I knew, and I just stuck with it.” He cracks as much of a smile as he can. “I guess I just live to disappoint you.”

“Stop it,” Steve says, kicking Bucky under the table. “I'm not trying to shame you or anything. I'm just curious. You were so dead-set on working for NASA. I mean, I remember when your dad wouldn't send you to space camp and you just wigged out.”

Bucky laughs at the memory. “Oh, man. I'd forgotten about that. Geez, we must have been … eight? Younger?”

“I can't remember.” Steve shakes his head, smiling. “Geez, it's really good to see you, Buck. You have no idea.”

“I have some idea,” he says, mashing down half of the strawberry ice cream. That was always how they did it. Bucky got the chocolate, Steve got the vanilla, and they split the strawberry. Then Bucky would eat what Steve couldn't. All kinds of things he's almost totally forgotten keep coming back to him. He smiles up at his old friend. “I missed you.”

Steve breathes out a small sigh. “Listen. I just wanted to say … About what happened when we were younger, you know --”

“Hey, woah.” Bucky puts his hands up. He's absolutely not prepared to have this conversation. Not prepared by a long-shot. He's been actively trying to think about _not_ having this conversation. Maybe not having it ever. “Let me enjoy your company a few more times before we start talking about … _that_. Okay?”

“Sure,” Steve agrees, though he looks visibly uncomfortable about it. He nods a little. “Is it okay if I ask you if you're seeing anyone?”

“Sure, since I'm really not,” Bucky laughs. “I mean, kind of. I'm sort of hooking up with Nat.”

“Your boss? The redhead?” A lot of looks flash over Steve's face before he settles on something between awe and disgust. “Aw, dude. Come on.”

“It's not serious,” Bucky says, playing with a napkin. He points at Steve. “And I'm not just saying that because I'm talking to you about it. And that's all we're saying about people that we're dating. Right? At _least_ three more times of us just hanging out. Or I'll kill you.”

“Fair enough.” Steve sits back in his chair, mixing his half of the strawberry with the vanilla.

“Tell me about Chicago,” Bucky says, desperate to change the subject.

Steve grins. “Man, where do I even start?”

Bucky sits back and listens, smile spreading across his face as he has a conversation he feels like he's been waiting ten years to have.

It's taken more out of him than he realizes, missing Steven Grant Rogers.

*****

 

Bucky has taken to jogging down to the high school for lunch. Steve waits for him on the steps to the theater, slip-on sneakers pulled off and set aside, jeans rolled up. The kids don't get there until the afternoon, and Bucky's forgotten how long public school goes for. They're in for at least another month and a half, and Steve is building a set for an adaptation of Tarzan & Jane from the leftovers of a set for The Pirates of Penzance. It's sort of cool; the only thing that changes in Bucky's professional life are the specials, and here Steve is taking an entire set and turning it into something else.

They get sandwiches from the Gourmet Heaven across the street or salads from the vegetarian place next door, and Steve bitches about Bucky's smoking and Bucky eats a lot of Steve's food. Steve is still _obsessed_ with baseball, and he's always chattering on and on about his favorite teams (still the Mets and the Yankees, even though both of them seem to have lost their magic). Bucky still pretends to give a shit because he knows how much it means to his best friend. Bucky likes football because it was his favorite sport to play in high school; he was okay at baseball but he hated waiting his turn.

They don't talk about Sharon or Natasha. Even when Bucky leaves Nat at his apartment to go see Steve before he heads into work. Even when Steve's phone is buzzing the entire time and Bucky can see Sharon's name on what appear to be a thousand texts. Bucky has no interest in talking about it. That's not what they're here for. Right now, they're just trying to figure out how to be friends again – no blame or hurt or words flung around. Bucky and Steve, the way it was when they were kids and the way it had been since they were in first grade.

Steve starts showing up to the restaurant for dinner when Bucky is working, and it delights him to no end because Steve tells Kate that he'll have whatever Bucky will make for him. Soon, Steve's tried everything on the menu and all the things that Nat is thinking about putting on it. He gives a lot of good feedback and before Bucky can even worry if Nat is going to put the kibosh on the entire operation, she starts asking Steve for his notes on the specials. Nat really likes Steve, Bucky notices. Steve never used to be the kind of guy that had chemistry with everyone; he was always too shy to talk to anyone. Now, it appears that he's become the kind of person that everyone falls head over heels in love with.

Bucky's always hated those kinds of people. He's always the last to know, and usually the last one to fall in love with them.

But this is _Steve_. His art-nerd best friend of practically his entire life. The guy he used to finish fights for and rescue out of the bathroom when some of the nastier kids were planning on dunking his head in a toilet bowl or something. The same kid who used to come to every game that Bucky ever played and learned how to drive in Nadja's hatchback and charmed all of his frigid Barnes aunts. So Bucky is confident that at least if everyone loves Steve now, he loved Steve first.

Steve becomes a bit of an institution, both at the restaurant and at Bucky and Clint's apartment. Lucky adores Steve. His tail only thumps harder for Kate, and he actually runs to the door if he smells Steve at it. Idly, Bucky starts to wonder when Steve is spending time with Sharon if he's usually either at school or Natalya's or the apartment. He's not upset about seeing Steve so much again, though. It's like the best part of his life came back, and he feels like he might have somehow gotten a second chance.

He hopes it isn't too fleeting, is all.

Clint is the first one to comment on Bucky's sudden upswing in attitude, but he's not the last. Bucky is finally tackling a solid two week's worth of dishes piled into the sink and Clint is feeding the sourdough starter that he keeps on top of the fridge when his hand stills in the bag of flour.

“You've been real chill lately,” Clint says, going back to digging around with his measuring cup.

“Oh?” Bucky settles a coffee mug into their drying rack. “Is that a bad thing?”

“Nah, man.” Clint shakes his head and dumps flour into the sticky mess of the sourdough starter. “I'm just making an observation. This Steve guy is really doing you some good.”

“Yeah,” Bucky ventures. He looks over at Clint, looking at Bucky oddly. “What?”

“Look, if I were a normal guy,” Clint says, leaning against the counter on both hands, “I would be teasing the shit out of you. I'm not a jerk, so I won't. And I leave out of your business because if you and Natasha want to make the beast with two backs and pretend I'm too stoned to notice, it's not my place. But, man. What are you doing with this guy?”

Bucky goes back to scrubbing out a pot that has some sort of sticky residue on it, probably from Clint's gross farro and chickpea monstrosity a few days ago. He's been avoiding this conversation with _Steve_ – there's no way he's going to have it with _Clint_.

“Listen to me.” Clint measures out some water from the bottle of the unfiltered stuff he keeps on the counter just for his sourdough and adds it to the bowl, reaching for a wooden spoon to mix it all together. “I got this brother. And I love him to death and I would do almost anything for him, but that's part of the reason why I can't be around him. I've gotten into my fair share of trouble, okay? And I know my luck's not the best. But man, Barney is just – I can't do it. I can't be getting into his messes and fixing his problems all the time. I wasn't always the greatest to him, and that shit just makes me sad. I might owe him that – I know I owe him something, anyway – but I just can't. It's not good for me.” He taps the spoon against the side of the bowl and dumps it into the sink with all the dishes that Bucky is trying to wash up. “I'm not saying that you didn't miss your friend and I don't know what happened to make you two not talk anymore, but I'm just – I'm trying to be proactive about you being proactive. It's not worth it to hurt yourself in the long run.”

“You don't know one damn thing about me and Steve,” Bucky snaps, dropping the spoon Clint's just used onto the counter. He's not going to clean up after Clint in the _middle_ of cleaning up after Clint. “It's none of your business.”

“I'm not trying to be a jerk, Buck,” Clint says, replacing the plastic wrap over the bowl. “I'm not. I'm trying to be your friend. I can read between the lines. I know what you're saying when you were telling me those stories. I'm not as brick-dumb as everyone thinks.”

They turn to face each other at the same time, Bucky standing there with water dripping off of his gloves and onto his bare feet and the floor, and Clint with his bowl of sourdough starter. Staring at one another.

Bucky does the only logical thing he can think to do and slaps the bowl out of Clint's hands.

“Fuck off,” he says, ripping off the gloves.

“Nice,” Clint sighs, staring at his precious sourdough splattered onto the floor.

Bucky stomps into his room and locks the door, kicking at the piles of dirty clothes on the floor.

He waits for Clint to leave and calls Natasha over, shoving all of his laundry under the bed or into the closet and looking forward to a solid half-hour of not thinking about one damn thing.

*****

 

The buzzer for the building has been broken since before Bucky moved in. Luckily, his window faces the street, so he can see if someone familiar is approaching. He sits on his bed, a book about how the universe was made open on his lap, taking advantage of the light that streams in through the window. He doesn't have a lot of stuff; the bed and the desk with his laptop on it, a bookshelf mostly filled with what he's borrowed from the library, and a repurposed rolling bar cart that he's plopped his thrift store television onto. He doesn't like the thought of having a cluttered up room, the way Clint has. All that stuff gives him claustrophobia.

He hasn't spoken to Clint beyond the bare minimum of what needs to be said at work to avoid a disastrous collision since their disagreement.

He feels sort of bad about it, but he's still incredibly angry that Clint would presume to know _anything_ about Steve, or about Steve and Bucky or any of it.

Clint is at Kate's with the dog or something. Bucky hadn't really asked for clarification, but whenever Clint takes Lucky out, it means that they're going to Kate's or one of the parks with the nice trails. Mondays, when the restaurant is closed, it seems like everyone has these totally separate lives. Bucky knows for a fact that Nat takes MMA classes on Mondays. Their busboy volunteers at a homeless shelter. Kate and Clint hang out with the dog, and Bucky just … sits at home. Sometimes he reads or plays video games, but he really doesn't like being out and about.

He catches sight of Steve, walking up from the direction of downtown. Steve lives further out, over by Southern, so for a minute Bucky wonders where he's parked. But it doesn't really matter. He marks his place in the book and grabs his keys in case the lock sticks when he goes downstairs to let Steve in.

Steve is a little surprised when Bucky opens the door.

“I was just going to call,” he says, waving his cell phone before slipping it back into his pocket.

“Too slow,” Bucky laughs. “I saw you walking up.”

“You got nothing better to do than watch who's walking by your place?”

“I've become an old man before my time. Come on up.”

Steve is quiet as they climb the stairs. Bucky can practically hear the gears whirring in his friend's head, and it scares the shit out of him. He and Steve always had that kind of a relationship where they disagreed about a lot of things and they tended to shout one another down about their opinions. Steve won a lot of those arguments, not only because he was the most stubborn person on the face of the planet but also because Bucky felt like Steve needed those little victories way more than he did. He can almost smell one of those disagreements brewing, and now he's not so sure if Steve is the one who needs a victory more.

Bucky locks the apartment door after Steve settles in and toes off his sneakers. So he's planning on staying at least a little bit, is what Bucky is getting from that.

“Clint here?” Steve asks, looking around for Lucky.

“Nah.” Bucky shakes his head. “He's out doing … I don't know. Clint stuff.”

“Clint stuff,” Steve repeats, laughing. “That's cool. I just – uh. I kinda wanted to talk.”

“Oh, Jesus.” Bucky rubs his eye. “Should I get a drink for this?”

“No, don't 'get a drink for this', c'mon, Buck.” Steve puts his hands out, pleading. “Can we just sit down and have a conversation?”

“What kind of conversation?”

“The … You know. The Chicago conversation.”

“If we have the Chicago conversation, we have to have the Peggy conversation, and I really don't want to have the Peggy conversation.”

Steve winces like he's been hit in the face. Bucky tries not to feel bad about this. Steve isn't the skinny kid he was in high school. He's not the guy Bucky has to protect anymore.

Maybe Clint was right.

Maybe the person Bucky should try to protect is _Bucky_.

“Come on, then.” Bucky gestures to the couch. “Let's have this God-awful conversation so I can stew about it for a few weeks.”

“Stop it,” Steve says. “Don't start trying to guilt trip me before we even talk about it.”

“What do you want?” Bucky shrugs. “I mean, _really_ , what do you want?”

“I just want to tell you that I wasn't sleeping with Peggy when I called things off.” His voice is too loud, almost reaching the pitch it did when they used to shout over one another.

Bucky's mouth twitches.

They had always been friends first. That was what they told each other constantly. Their friendship came first, it always, _always_ came first. No matter what else happened, no matter what went on – they were Bucky and Steve, friends till the end of the line. They had been friends for ten years before their feelings for one another got the better of them, and they both figured that ten years was more important than the two that they ended up being together. All of the messy, complicated relationship stuff that happened after they graduated high school – it was still supposed to be small fries.

Bucky had kept on dating girls after he and Steve had accidentally declared their feelings for one another to keep up appearances. Nadja and Sarah both were deeply religious and neither of their sons thought their reaction would be all that great. Steve didn't really ask about those other girls, so Bucky didn't really say anything about them. After they graduated, they were supposed to go somewhere else. Start over. Go somewhere they didn't have to keep secrets.

Steve got accepted at the Art Institute and they thought Chicago might be the best place. Bucky stayed in Brooklyn to work for a little while so he could afford his own place when he left the city.

And then Steve didn't come home for Christmas.

He called things off over the phone, but they just kept saying that they were friends first. Friends first.

Nadja kept an eye on Steve as best she could; she had been friends with Sarah, too. She thought she owed it to her dead best fried to look out for her son. Nadja was how Bucky found out about Peggy. About Steve's great new girlfriend. This amazing girl he was already just so in love with.

It wasn't the only reason Bucky stopped talking to Steve, but it certainly had a lot to do with it.

Now, they're standing in the foyer of Bucky's apartment with just over ten years between then and this moment.

Bucky lost a fucking arm and a mother and a sense of direction and it seems like Steve's life just got more and more perfect.

So, he'd say that he's a little angry. Just a little.

“ _Say_ something,” Steve demands.

Bucky grimaces. “Like what? You can't just – you can't just drop that shit on the table and expect me to form a coherent response. I figured you weren't screwing anyone. You're not that kind of person. You're perfect. You're the inscrutable Steven Grant Rogers and you're the golden child and I was just distractingly handsome so no one figured that out. I get it. I fucked up, right? Is that what you wanna hear? I didn't keep up my end of the deal?”

“No, Buck, I just --”

“Oh, no. No, no. I _get it_. I fucked up. I fucked up and I ruined my life. I ruined everything. I was supposed to be big enough to say that you were free to do what you wanted and we would still be the best of buds, and I _didn't_. I'm fucking sorry, but I got _hurt_. I was so ready to go out there. I had your fucking Christmas gift. I might've ruined our friendship, but at least I didn't fucking _bail_ on us for the first cute girl who smiled at me.”

“I didn't bail on you for the first cute girl. She was – you know what, fuck off. She was special. And yeah, you did ruin it, and I did bail. But I didn't bail for just anyone, alright? I didn't. And you need to know that.”

“Every piece of ass is something special, isn't it?”

Steve gets an ugly look on his face and Bucky is fully prepared to be punched. When they were kids, Steve punched Bucky all the time. Of course, back then, it didn't hurt at all and Steve was probably half the size he is now. Bucky is prepared for a king hit right to the jaw, and he squares his feet to withstand it.

Seconds tick by. They stare at each other, faces contorted with all the hurt that's been building up since they were last face to face. Steve takes a step forward and Bucky barely, just barely, flinches.

He's totally unprepared when Steve grabs him by the collar and kisses him.

If Bucky had known that this was how they hooked up again, he might not have been so keen on letting Steve in.

But here they are, fumbling into Bucky's room and kicking the door closed as an afterthought. Pawing at each other's clothes like they're teenagers again, laughing when Steve's shirt gets snagged on one of his stretched ears.

“That's something I never thought we'd have to deal with,” Bucky says, sliding his finger under the neck of the shirt to free Steve.

“I could say the same about this.” Steve touches Bucky's prosthetic. “Do you leave it on, or … ?”

“Well, yeah. I need leverage and I don't like doing one armed push-ups.”

“Hilarious.” Steve rolls his eyes. “Assuming you're just going to be on top like that.”

“Hey.” Bucky pauses to struggle out of his own shirt. “The last time we did this, you were like – it would've been a joke if you were on top. You weighed like ninety pounds.”

“And now I think I got you in the height and weight category.” He eases the hem of Bucky's shirt over the prosthetic, fingers brushing over the seam. “Well, maybe not weight.”

“I'm a fucking chef, asshole,” Bucky laughs. “And I still work out.”

“I'm just teasing,” Steve says, smiling crookedly. “And you can be on top.”

“Considerate. But now I just feel like it's out of pity.” Bucky hooks his fingers into Steve's belt loops, tugging him closer to the bed. Back when they were younger, they rarely got to do this in an actual bedroom – only if they were lucky enough to be at Steve's place when Sarah was working or if Nadja and Big Jim were out of town. There wasn't a lot of savoring the moment and enjoying their time together. More quick fumbling and desperation.

This … this is not like that.

Bucky takes the time to map out every tattoo with fingertips and tongue, one trailing after the other, from Steve's hips up his chest and down his arms. They're all beautiful, and every touch seems to make Steve shiver and shudder, hands digging deeper into Bucky's ponytail.

“I don't know if I like your long hair yet,” Steve admits, tugging on it lightly while Bucky works on wiggling down their underwear.

“I haven't cut it short in four years,” Bucky says, tossing his boxers into the heap of their discarded clothes.

“Too cool for that now, huh?” Steve asks, laughing as Bucky nips at his hipbone. “That's still ticklish, watch it.”

“Definitely too cool. Look at me.” Bucky rests his cheek on Steve's tattooed thigh, smiling a sort of half-smile at him. God, he's missed Steve. He used to think that they were going to spend their entire lives together. That they would have had the chance to grow up together.

“I'm looking,” Steve says gently.

And maybe that's all love is, Bucky thinks. Looking at someone and seeing through all their bad qualities to the good person underneath. Steve was always all the good things, just in a package that wasn't all that impressive. It was Bucky who had the good wrappings and all the shit inside, and somehow Steve managed to overlook that.

When they're done, Steve curls up on Bucky's chest and everything seems like it might be alright in the end.

“What were we fighting about?” Bucky asks, laughing lightly.

“Girls,” Steve says simply, reaching up to brush Bucky's hair away from his face.

“Right.” He sighs. “Them.”

“I'm sorry.” Steve lays his hand on Bucky's face. “About everything.”

“I'm sorry I yelled at you.”

“Just for that?”

“Yeah,” Bucky laughs. “Hey, scoot over for a minute. I have something for you.”

“What?” Steve props himself up on his elbow.

“Yeah, just – get off for a minute.”

Steve scoots over and Bucky swings his legs off the edge of his mattress. He's only self-conscious about being naked for a minute before he remembers that Steve's seen him naked since they were probably twelve. Whenever it was that they had to start changing in locker rooms for gym class. He goes over to his closet and pulls down a box advertising a now-defunct meat packer from back home. It's the box that Bucky keeps all of his sentimental things in; he doesn't quite like having them scattered around. Family photos, his mother's wedding ring, all the things his Roma uncles ever gave him – they stay in the box. It takes some digging, but at the bottom of the box, he finds it: a small rectangle, wrapped in faded newspaper and tied up with crushed red grosgrain ribbon.

“I kept your Christmas gift,” Bucky admits sheepishly, crossing back over to the bed. He scoots back under the covers, holding it out. “I kept meaning to throw it into the East River, but I never really got the chance.”

“You're so dramatic,” Steve laughs. “Into the East River, really?”

“I mean, what harm would it do?”

Steve takes the package, inspecting its heft and weight. “It's so small.”

“Hey, you know how broke I was at nineteen? I was saving all my money and getting by on hand-rolled cigarettes and my dad's metro-pass. You're lucky I got you anything.”

Steve smiles, sliding the ribbon off. He inspects the uneven seams of the paper and the copious amount of tape.

“You wrapped it yourself, huh?”

“Will you just open it? It's waited ten damn years.”

“Hold your horses,” Steve laughs. “Geez.” He slides his finger under the tape one at a time until he's opened one edge and can slide the contents right out like an envelope. He holds the little tin case in his hands, brushing his fingers over the pressed designs in the metal. “Is this … Is this the watercolor case I kept eyeballing from the antique store?”

“Yeah,” Bucky admits. “It had an old set of watercolors in there, you know. But I popped them out and put new ones in – and I had to replace the leather handle, it was all rotted away.” He points. “See?”

Steve brushes his thumb over the leather, tooled with his initials. Leather work was one of the weird things Bucky's Roma uncles did, and they had taught him when he was a kid. It was part of the long traditions that his mother hadn't wanted him to forget; just because she married a WASP-y businessman, she didn't want her son to be the same.

“The paints are probably shit by now,” Steve says, voice cracking.

“So I should have just thrown it in the river, right?” Bucky teases, bumping his shoulder into Steve's.

“Shut up,” Steve says, reaching out to pull Bucky's face towards his so he can press his lips against every inch of it that he can reach. “You're such an idiot.”

“I always figured that it was part of my charm,” Bucky laughs.

“Sort of,” Steve admits. “Kind of.”

They stay in bed until they hear the door open and Kate's little wind-chime of a laugh, Lucky's claws clattering on the floor. Bucky's totally forgotten about his disagreement with Clint, and they order a pizza and watch some new Netflix show starring people that both Bucky and Clint can't stand. Steve declines the invitation to stay the night on the grounds that he wouldn't want to take the couch away from Kate – which is sort of bullshit, as everyone knows that Kate would end up in Clint's room sooner or later – and as he leaves, something finally occurs to Bucky:

What about Sharon?


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bucky isn't the jerk he tries to pretend he is. Maybe people might think that for the first five minutes of knowing him – he talks too loud and he never lost much of his Brooklyn accent, and he's sarcastic and shows affection by insulting people to their face. But that's not him. He's still the guy that would steal his mom's car and come get you if you were stranded in New Jersey. He's still the guy that would make sure every drunk girl made it home from a party safe and sound. He's till the kid that fed stray animals and used to get in trouble at his job for helping customers who were short with cash out of his own pocket.
> 
> Bucky's not a perfect person, but God damn, he tries. And that's what's really so impressive about him. Nothing ever took him down. No matter the devastation, the storm – whatever it was, Bucky just kept fucking going.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I got hella lazy about editing, but I'm working through it. I'm also working on a mix. Probably one more chapter, maybe two. Thanks again, folks!

Steve waits in his car in the chiropractor’s lot until Bucky gets home from work, sometime around midnight or one in the morning during the week and closer to two on the weekends. Sometimes he naps and sometimes he works on his lesson plans or reads over the essays the school makes all the kids do to make their art school experience more enriching. He thanks his lucky stars that he and Sharon aren't at the point of dating where staying over at each other's houses during the week is normal and gets out of his car when Bucky pulls into his driveway.   
  
He didn't go on and get back together with Bucky so they could keep on hiding, and it frustrates him like an itch in the middle of his back. But he can't bring himself to do to Sharon what he did to Bucky in the first place – bail when someone smiled at him real nice.   
  
It hasn't exactly been a picnic, the last ten years.   
  
Peggy was great. Peggy was absolutely one of the best things that happened to him. And Steve doesn't have the heart to tell Bucky that he's angry at a girl who died right after they graduated college. This amazing, beautiful girl with gorgeous red lipstick, who made paper and textiles and could sew like crazy – just. Gone, one day. Threw a clot and had an embolism and that was it. Steve was starting to think that everything he loved had the insane desire to die, just to get away from him.   
  
He also doesn't have the heart to tell Bucky that the reason he left Chicago, in the end, was over yet another failed relationship – this one being an explosive and somewhat torrid affair with an older gentleman who couldn't express his emotions and self-medicated his anxiety with expensive scotch.   
  
So Bucky can sit there and think that Steve is this beacon of greatness and good fortune all he wants, but it doesn't change the fact that Steve's fucked up quite a bit in the intervening years. The pedestal that Bucky's placed him on makes him more than a little uncomfortable, but the happiness at being reunited seems to make up for it.   
  
Bucky starts coming to his senses one night when they're eating Chinese food in his bed, watching some unnecessarily dark movie about robots or something. School is finally out for the summer and Steve has to start rounding up work to make his paychecks last. They're starting set construction for Shakespeare In The Park soon – and that's a prospect that sort of excites him. A bunch of his students are interning there and his roommate does a lot of the electrical work.   
  
Bucky dumps a load of green peppers into Steve's take-out container and appropriates all the baby corns that Steve has piled up on a napkin. Before he tucks into his new-found bounty, he looks over at Steve, eyebrows drawing down.   
  
“What?” Steve asks, mouth full of fried rice.   
  
“So, uh. About Sharon,” Bucky says, eyes flicking back to the container in his hand.   
  
Steve sighs.   
  
“Don't start.” Bucky spears a baby corn with his plastic fork. “I'm just – I know this has never been, like, the most healthy and conventional relationship, alright? But I just – you know, it's really not fair to her. And it's not fair to me if we're just going to keep doing this and you're going to drop me for someone else again.”   
  
“Did Nat tell you that?”   
  
“Clint, actually. Guy's not as stupid as he looks.”   
  
“I don't know why everyone thinks he's dumb. He's sharp as a tack and he looks it.” Steve pushes his food around with his chopsticks.   
  
“You're kind of avoiding the question I'm trying to ask here.”   
  
“Because I don't know how to answer it,” Steve admits. “I like Sharon, Buck. I like her. And she likes me. She's a good person, and she's smart and tough and funny. There's nothing fundamentally wrong with our relationship.”   
  
“Except for the fact that you're sleeping with your ex-boyfriend while trying to be with her.”   
  
“Well, there's that, yeah.” Steve's mouth twitches. He knows that he tries to hold onto too many things so that he doesn't lose everything. He knows that he gets into unhealthy situations just so that he doesn't have to bear the thought of being alone for too long. Tony taught him the latter, and this situation is teaching him the former.   
  
“Look.” Bucky puts his fork down to rub his eyes. “I'm just thinking – I think we should either stop doing this and figure out how to be friends again, or we should keep doing it exclusively and figure out if we're even compatible as a couple again.”   
  
They look at each other. Bucky doesn't look terribly happy with those options, and Steve knows that he doesn't like them either. He's sure that Bucky is still sleeping with Natasha when he has the chance, and he's not entirely clear on the extent of the emotions that go into it. They could, theoretically, be a couple. And they might be a great couple. They weren't too bad at it when they were seventeen and eighteen, but now they're twenty-seven and twenty-eight. There are all kinds of collected neuroses and baggage weighing them down now.   
  
“Let's put a pin in this conversation,” Steve suggests, leaning over to press a kiss to Bucky's temple. “We can just … think about it. Okay?”   
  
Bucky sighs, but relents. “Okay. Can we agree that this is all sort of … fucked up?”   
  
“Yeah. Yeah, it is. And you're right. It's not fair. But I don't think either of us really wants to do anything different right now, right?”   
  
“You got me there.”   
  
“So – just. We'll deal with it later.”   
  
“Yeah.” Bucky's lips twitch into a cold smile. “You wanna put this food down and fool around?”   
  
“I'm all bloated from Chinese food,” Steve laughs, swatting at him.   
  
“That's the fun part,” Bucky laughs, leaning in to nip at Steve's throat.   
  
“Stop it,” Steve says, laughing harder.   
  
Bucky's nightstand is crowded with their containers and the food gets cold, but it's worth it to see Bucky stretch out afterward, grinning from ear to ear, fucked out and blissful.   
  


*****

Now that school is out, Sharon is working on the summer programs she spent a lot of time crafting. Steve had obviously volunteered his time to do some of the art classes, and he gets a small stipend to spend on supplies. He takes Sharon with him to Hull's – he's not going to buy the things for the classes there because it's way too expensive, but he likes going there and he likes showing Sharon things that he loves. She gets a real kick out of the wooden models, leaving them in yoga poses or in the middle of doing cartwheels.

She picks up a wooden hand and makes it do the OK sign.

“It's sort of morbid that this reminded me,” she says, waving the hand, “but how's Bucky?”

Steve laughs as he leafs through a sketchbook. “I think he'd be proud that a disembodied wooden hand made you think of him, actually.” He puts the sketchbook back down on the shelf. He doesn't need another one; there are so many piles of sketchbooks in his apartment that he worries his roommate's cat might knock them all down and crush himself to death one day. “He's doing okay. He's just … you know. He's just Bucky. Always has been, always will be.”

“I don't really know him that well, but he always seemed kind of … I don't know. Sad, maybe.” She puts the hand back in its spot and shrugs. “Like he sort of lets stuff happen to him and doesn't do anything about it and then he gets mad when it doesn't turn out different.”

“He's sort of always been like that,” Steve admits. Bucky's been a bro since before the term was really solidified into the cultural lexicon. All of Steve's art friends hated Bucky; he had to come up with a million excuses as to why they were still friends beyond 'we've just always been friends'. He didn't tell anyone about how they were also sleeping together.

“Hey, wow,” Sharon says, breezing by to a large display of origami paper, hands outstretched to look at all the different patterns and Bucky completely forgotten. There's a beautiful mobile of paper cranes that she made for Steve hanging up in his bedroom at home. “How gorgeous is this?”

“I have some store credit if you want a few new sheets,” Steve says, digging in his wallet for the receipt that he had returned a few paintbrushes on.

She raises her eyebrow. “If you're sure,” she says, fingers already dancing through the stacks.

Steve picks up a few new tubes of oil paint for a project he's been working on where he recreates famous paintings with pop stars. The same thing's been done with Photoshop, but he thinks that the impact is felt more with the physical canvas. There's a gallery opening he's been invited to towards the end of the summer and he's thinking that if those pieces turn out well enough, he might show them. He never used to paint much; it was always so time consuming to set everything up and find the right canvas and sketch everything out and make the right adjustments that by the time he actually sat down with his paint in hand, he had already lost inspiration for the piece. It's why he's always preferred watercolor or gouache, and even then only in moderation. Now that he has a set studio, it makes things a lot easier.

He's thinking a lot about that gallery opening and his painting when he takes Sharon out to dinner after their stop at Hull's. She throws an olive off their tapas plate at him.

“Are you here with me right now?” she laughs. “You've been so spacey lately.”

“Sorry,” he laughs, rubbing his face. “I keep thinking about that gallery installation. I'm trying to figure out when I'll have time to do something for it, between Elm Shakes and the summer camp thing.”

“You don't _have_ to do the summer camp, you know,” she says gently. “I know there are other things you have going on. And the pay is – well, it's kind of shit.”

“I don't do things for the money, Share, you know that.” Steve smiles. “I'd rather help the kids. I have kind of a cool thing I'm thinking about with airbrushing. Taking a week to do something with graffiti, maybe.”

“Oh, that would be awesome,” Sharon says, breaking out into a smile. Steve thinks that if more people could see Sharon smile, the world might be a better place. “How about screen-printing? Do we have it in the budget to do something like that?”

“Might need some computers for the designs,” he says, brain starting to whir. “You know, kids go nuts for stuff they can take home and wear or use. I already had a tie-dye unit I was thinking about for the younger kids, but the high-schoolers might like it too, right?”

She agrees emphatically, and they talk about all the things they might be able to fit into the budget at the rec center. Sharon is working towards being on the Board of Education someday, and she wants to put as much successful after-school and summer programs on her resume as possible. She's a little older than Steve at thirty-two, but she's got her shit together. She's got a plan. She's an amazing collaborator and, honestly, a really great partner.

If Steve had tried to talk to Bucky about what kinds of things kids would want to do for summer camp, he would have said something like “smoke pot and talk about sex”, because he was never an arts and crafts kind of guy. Steve constantly wonders what Bucky could have done if he had stuck with college and done all the things that he said he would. Sure, maybe working for NASA is the sort of dream that every kid has and only one in a very few might achieve – but Bucky would have been a really great statistician of some kind. Don't insurance agencies need people like that? The CDC? Everyone needs numbers crunched. Shit, he could have been an accountant like his dad.

There's a strike in Sharon's favor, Steve figures. Being a chef can absolutely be a career, Steve knows. But it seems like being a line cook was just something Bucky kind of stumbled into and never left. Like he put his entire life on the back burner when Steve left and his mom died and just turned on autopilot to get through it.

He realizes two days later when Bucky is cooking dinner for everyone at Steve's house that may be unfair to say. They had a little impromptu get-together when Steve's roommate Wanda turned out to know Kate, and some of their friends showed up with a few six-packs of shitty beer. Everyone started bitching about being hungry, but no one wanted to leave the house – so Bucky had looked at Steve and asked him how attached he was to whatever was in the fridge.

It appears that Steve's miscalculated Bucky's love for cooking, because he's having the time of his life tossing vegetables around in a pan for the vegans in attendance while he turns some frozen Steak-Ums into Korean grilled beef sandwiches with nothing but Hawaiian sweet rolls and some soy sauce and sesame oil.

“Geez, Buck,” Steve says as he watches Bucky assemble sandwiches and hand them out. “Where did you learn how to do this?”

“I worship at the altar of Momofuku and David Chang,” Bucky laughs, scraping up the last of the peppers and onions and asparagus to plop onto a bun for one of Kate's friends. “That, and I worked in a Korean food truck on the weekends for a year or two.”

“Jesus,” Steve mutters as Bucky forces a napkin-wrapped sandwich into his hands.

“Eat,” Bucky insists, setting aside a sandwich for himself before he starts digging through the cabinets. “You got any cocoa powder? I saw some raspberry jam in your fridge and I can make some raspberry brownies real quick. Clint taught me.”

“Who are you?” Steve demands.

“James Buchanan Barnes,” he says, grinning cheekily. “Just better.”

So maybe Bucky hadn't put what he loved on hold for something that was better used as a placeholder. Maybe he had just found something else that he loves just as much, maybe more, and Steve was letting his mother's interpretation of what it meant to be fulfilled and happy bleed onto his own. Having a nine to five job with benefits wasn't everyone's ideal – and it sure as fuck isn't Bucky's. When was it ever supposed to be?

After Bucky admits that Natasha is thinking about making him a partner in the restaurant and he has contingency plans if that never pans out, Steve takes back his mark in Sharon's favor as far as planning for the future goes. They've both got it handled, and Steve was just looking for something to tip the scale in favor of breaking things off with one of them.

Bucky is right; it's really not fair to any of them.

*****

It's a Sunday morning and Bucky is sprawled out in Steve's bed, sleeping so that he takes up the entire damn thing. He looks like he belongs there, among all the photos and framed art crammed on Steve's walls. He's been working on some sketches of Bucky while he sleeps there, comparing them to a few of Sharon that he's also made. A sort of grotesque idea is fomenting in his head for the gallery: portraits of Sharon and Bucky in watercolor, doing the same things in the same places. Both of his lovers, compared and contrasted side-by-side.

It's sort of overly dramatic and a little performance art for his tastes, but it's probably better than a portrait of Blac Chyna as Aphrodite that someone's probably already made – and made better – in Photoshop. He already had to scrap Beyonce as the Mona Lisa when he found that exact thing on the internet. He starts churning the idea around in his head. A painting of the paper crane mobile next to a picture of a steaming lamb and dill pirozhki, the first thing Bucky had made for him at Natalya's. The way their backs looked in the dark when they were pulling their clothes back on. Sharon's crinkle-eyed smile with all her teeth showing compared to Bucky's crooked smirk.

“Hey,” Bucky mumbles, eyes still closed.

“Hi,” Steve says.

“What are you doing?”

“A sketch.”

“Of my bare ass?”

“That's part of it.”

“Come fuck me.”

Steve laughs, flipping his sketch pad closed. “You have a way with words.”

“Let my food talk for me,” he says, eyes fluttering open. “You have to go be a good boyfriend at that thing tonight and I have to work. Let's not waste time, right?”

“Right,” Steve agrees.

Bucky is almost late to work that day, and Steve is distracted and fumbling at the engagement party for one of Sharon's friends that night.

He really can't keep doing this.

*****

Sharon is going on vacation for a week, heading down to the Caribbean on a cruise. She had booked it before she and Steve had started dating, but she doesn't want to skip out when her whole family is going to be there – even if it means missing Steve's birthday.

“It's not a big deal,” he insists. “I have one every year.”

“But it's the first one we're together for,” she says, wringing her bathing suit around in her hands before she tosses it into her suitcase.

“I'm not mad, Share,” Steve says, hands out with palms up. “Don't beat yourself up. We'll do something nice when you get back.”

“I just don't want to leave you alone up here,” she admits.

Steve falters.

She's catching on.

It's a paranoid thought to have, and probably without merit. It was just – the way she said it. Not that she hates him being alone _on his birthday_. She _doesn't want to_ leave him here. Maybe she's noticed that they're not having sex as often or that he's tired when he's with her or his suspicious lack of talking about what he does when they're not together. Sure, he tells her when he hangs out with Bucky – but he omits the sex parts and just tells her about the bird watching, or going to the community garden for Bucky to try his hand at growing tomatoes, or buying a bundle of tickets for those lame classic movie features at the movie theater.

Sharon doesn't even know that he's bisexual; he describes his last relationship in loose terms so as to avoid spilling the beans about his former boyfriend. The reception is never that great, when he tells a woman that he's bi. They get jealous and weird.

“Steve?” she says, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear. “What's wrong?”

“Nothing,” he says, scrubbing his hands over his face. “Nothing. I'm sorry. I'm going to miss you, and you're going to have a great time, and we're going to have a great little get-together when you get back. Okay?”

“Sure,” she says, smiling a tired sort of smile. “You wanna …” She gestures towards the bed. “You know. Since you won't see me for a while.”

Steve grins and shoves the suitcase onto the floor. Sharon squeaks when he picks her up and bounces her onto the mattress, and he laughs as he slides his hand up her thigh.

He feels terrible, but most of his thoughts are about how he'll have a week free to spend with Bucky without having to worry about compromising on time.

*****

Bucky sticks his head back into his kitchen through the window and calls, “Come on, man, you're gonna miss them.”

“Hold on,” Steve hollers back, grabbing a six pack of beer from the fridge. He spots Bucky's cigarettes sitting on the kitchen counter and grabs them; Buck would be pissed if he has to miss any of the fireworks to crawl back inside and get them.

Steve can barely fit through the window, but he makes it out onto the fire escape in one piece, settling down on the folded up towels Bucky's set up so the grate doesn't dig into them. Bucky takes two beers and snaps the tops off with his lighter, passing one back to Steve.

“Remember when you could do that with your teeth?” Steve asks, slinging his arm around Bucky's shoulders.

“Oh, yeah.” Bucky hooks a finger in the corner of his mouth and points out a ragged tooth. “I cracked this bad boy doing that. So now I stick to knives and lighters.”

“Why not just bottle openers, you freak?”

“You never have a bottle opener when you need one,” Bucky says with a shrug.

Steve laughs and takes a sip of his beer. There's some truth to that.

Bucky snakes his arm around Steve's waist and tugs him just a little closer. They used to watch the fireworks every year for Steve's birthday. It was a tradition, just like Bucky getting those weirdly delicious chocolate covered orange rings for his birthday and every major holiday. Steve presses a kiss to the top of Bucky's head, breathing in the smell of sweat and shampoo and just a hint of the kitchen grease that never really comes off him.

The sun is barely set – just under the horizon. They're up high enough that they can see some of the fireworks from far away; they didn't want to brave the beaches and the crowds there. Too many screaming kids and irate families and chances to run into someone who might tell Sharon that they saw Steve and Bucky holding hands and necking.

Not that Kate hasn't seen them doing that enough times that Bucky's commented on how remarkable it is that everything is still a secret.

“Hey,” Bucky says.

“Hey, what?”

“What ever happened to Peggy?”

Off in the distance, a test flare goes up and bursts – sparks of silver-white spreading over the sky.

Steve sighs. “She died.”

Bucky pulls away, looking at Steve incredulously. “She _died_?”

“She died.” Steve looks down at the beer in his hand and swallows the lump in his throat. “She just – it was a totally freak thing. We were in our apartment and she just went down like a shot. Aneurysm. Could've happened to anybody.”

“But it happened to her,” Bucky says, a hint of sadness in his voice. He looks up at the sky. “Man, I – I used to wish both of you so much bad shit. My mother would have killed me if she knew how much bad stuff I thought. You remember, you don't do dirty even to a dog or it'll come back for you. But I didn't care. I was so angry. And I wished all kinds of mean things and spiteful things and now that I know it happened --” He takes a sip of his beer, shaking his head. “You really shouldn't want me anymore.”

“The thing is, I never really stopped.” Steve reaches out, groping for Bucky's hand. “I loved – still love – Peggy. It was totally different from me and you. She was just … amazing. Totally captivating. And I wouldn't trade a minute of our time together or make any different decisions, and maybe I'm only a little sorry for that – but there hasn't really been a time when I stopped thinking about you. Stopped thinking about you in terms of – Geez, not just being my friend, you know? I always thought about how it was. I used to dream about the place we would have gotten out in Chicago. How different it would have been.”

“I had to pay my dues, don't you worry about that.” Bucky laughs bitterly. “I feel like – I don't know. Maybe I would have taken you for granted. I already did. All those high school girlfriends and all my friends. I mean, no one even knew why I was friends with you. They thought you were a loser.”

“My friends hated you too.”

“That's what I mean – I think when I was eighteen, I was so … into what people thought and what they said. And maybe if you hadn't broken things off with me, I would've listened to someone some day who said that I could do better or that we weren't good together, you know? I would've gotten comfortable and cocky and I would've broken up with you and went off chasing something without realizing that you really were the best thing that could have happened to me.”

“Stop it,” Steve says, turning his face.

“I'm just – I'm sorry.” Bucky shakes his head. “I promised myself that I would be cool for your birthday and we wouldn't have any heavy conversations.”

“Let me ask you something,” Steve says. “Do you love Natasha?”

“What?”

“Well?”

Bucky sucks on his teeth, eyes skyward as another firework goes up and explodes. “No.”

“You had to think about that.”

“You know, when you have to think about whether or not you love someone, it usually means that you already know the answer to that question. And the answer is almost always 'no'.”

“You believe that?”

“Do you love Sharon?”

“Not yet.”

“Diplomatic.” Bucky laughs, shaking his head.

Steve takes another sip of his beer and leans back against the brick facade of the house. “Do you love me?”

“Absolutely,” Bucky says, without even a hint of feint or force. “For most of my life, actually.”

Steve waits, watching Bucky light a cigarette. “Aren't you going to ask me?”

“No,” Bucky says around the cigarette stuck in his teeth.

“Why not?”

Bucky takes a long drag off the cigarette and breathes smoke out into the air. He looks over at Steve with that smirk on his face – the one that's sort of haughty and a little proud but mostly just sad. “I just don't think I'll like the answer,” he says.

It knocks Steve's breath right out of him.

Of course he loves Bucky. And maybe it's a little tangled up and fraught, but he can't really even recall a time when his world didn't revolve around his best friend in some way or another. It's just that he's loved a few other people in between having Bucky in his life. Peggy, and then Tony. And maybe Sharon. He wasn't lying when he said he wasn't in love with her yet, but he knows he _might be_. One day. One day soon, even. But what's the point of having someone he doesn't even love around when he has someone he's always been crazy about right here? What's the point of any of it?

Bucky taps ash off the edge of the fire escape, blowing smoke rings.

“I don't want you to feel bad for me or anything,” he says. “I can live without you if you decide that you want to be with Sharon forever, or something. I won't be _happy_ about it. But I'll be okay. Maybe me and Nat can make a go of it or something.”

“Nat's not your only option,” Steve says weakly.

“No, it's – I don't want you to feel bad for me,” he repeats, shaking his head, “but dating with one arm and a high school education isn't the best situation. I've had _one_ girlfriend since high school, and plenty of casual dates, but since I lost the arm – just one other girl and Nat. I'm not – people don't _line up_ around the block to date me like when we were younger. I'm not that guy anymore.”

“I know you keep saying that you don't want me to feel bad for you, but you're kind of making me feel bad for you.”

“I don't want to _make_ you feel bad for me. I'm not telling you this so you'll cry and hug me and tell me that we can get married or something.” Bucky shakes his head. “I'm just not the long-term kind, I guess.” He flicks his cigarette butt off into the distance and immediately lights another one. “I guess I'm just saying – I wouldn't blame you for staying with Sharon. You guys could have a real future together.”

_Unless she finds out about this_ , Steve thinks.

God, of _course_ he'd burn down everything for Bucky.

Bucky isn't the jerk he tries to pretend he is. Maybe people might think that for the first five minutes of knowing him – he talks too loud and he never lost much of his Brooklyn accent, and he's sarcastic and shows affection by insulting people to their face. But that's not him. He's still the guy that would steal his mom's car and come get you if you were stranded in New Jersey. He's still the guy that would make sure every drunk girl made it home from a party safe and sound. He's till the kid that fed stray animals and used to get in trouble at his job for helping customers who were short with cash out of his own pocket.

Bucky's not a perfect person, but God damn, he tries. And that's what's really so impressive about him. Nothing ever took him down. No matter the devastation, the storm – whatever it was, Bucky just kept fucking going.

A giant crackle of purple and blue flares up over the park. There's a sad smile on Bucky's face.

“Hey,” Steve says hoarsely.

Bucky looks at him, eyebrows drawn up, smile guileless.

“I do love you,” he says.

Bucky laughs. “I hoped you'd say that.”

*****

Steve calls in a long weekend to everyone he knows and spends four days in his studio with reams of rough watercolor paper and all of his best pens.

He starts with a name.

**ELEGY/INVICTUS** , inscribed in black ink on a page. Elegy for Sharon, Invictus for Bucky. He signs his name under it and gets a new page, flipping around in his sketchbook for the right sketches. Sharon tends to look cartoonish, slightly exaggerated. Big eyes, big hair. He tones it down for the pieces he's going to use for the show, but her large eyes remain. In her portrait, she looks slightly over her shoulder, wry smile on her lips. Bucky always looks hard and stern and serious, and in the portrait painted next to Sharon's, Steve draws him with just a hint of a sad smile, hair falling out of its ponytail and in his face.

He works on them all four days and then a fifth, just for good measure. He leaves his studio and goes to work on the set for Elm Shakes, and goes back to work on the installation some more.

When his muse finally leaves him, he sleeps for ten hours. Upon waking, the only thing he wants is one of those damn _pirozhki_ that Bucky makes at Natalya's, so he goes there.

Bucky and Natasha are both not there, but Kate brings Steve his order and sits down to flirt with him for a few minutes in between her other tables.

Steve tries not to panic about them both not being there.

Why does it bother him so much?

It's not like he's not going to see Sharon for dinner later.

It's not like he has any idea what he's going to do.

(That, he realizes, is fast becoming a lie.)

Fuck.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bucky is maybe not the smartest man, not the most adept at plumbing the depths of emotion and perhaps only skilled at manipulation and outbursts, but he can read between the lines. He knows when he's been dumped for someone else. And really, he should have seen it coming. Steve and Sharon are amazing together; Bucky was always the extra. Of course they're going to try and tough it out and Steve's infidelity was just a hiccup on their road to white picket fences and babies and police benefit dinners.
> 
> Why would anyone want Bucky, anyway? One-armed fuck up that he is.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alright, that's it, that's all she wrote. 
> 
> Thanks again for sticking with it, reading, commenting, giving me kudos. Y'all are great. Expect to see some more things from this universe because kitchen bro Bucky is my specialty and I'm trying to get my muse for Steve to kick back into high gear.
> 
> xo  
> jax

Natasha stares at Bucky, cold and impassive as always.

“That's never happened to me before,” Bucky says, rubbing his temples.

She doesn't say anything, merely gets out of bed and starts to put her underwear back on.

“Are you mad at me or something?” he asks, his voice edging on panic. Edging on anger.

She turns to look at him, lips pursed. “Buck,” she says. She sighs, leaning down to grab her tank top. “Please tell him how you feel.”

He sighs.

“I mean really, actually tell him,” she continues, wiggling into her jeans. “I like you a lot. You're one of my best friends, and I don't just _say_ these things. But I think you're comfortable with your situation because I'm still sleeping with you.”

“That's not entirely true,” he says, sitting up. “I'm very _uncomfortable_ with the situation and I'm using sleeping with you as a cover for something deeper.”

“Just as bad,” she says, shrugging.

“That was supposed to be a joke.”

She shoots him a look. “You have to gut up and tell him that you want to be with him. This whole – dancing around the subject and sleeping with me thing? It's not working out.”

“Are you breaking up with me?”

“A break-up implies that we were dating,” she sniffs. “I'm just telling you that we are no longer having sexual relations.”

“Oh.”

She slips her t-shirt over her head and puts her hands on the bed, leaning over to kiss him hard.

“Stop being a sad, pathetic sack, okay?” She taps under his chin with her finger. “I'm already friends with Clint. I don't need another one.”

“You sure know how to be motivational.” He smiles.

She smiles back. “Go get 'em, tiger.”

After she leaves, he calls Steve but it goes to voicemail. He takes a shower, but leaves his phone in his room, and misses the call back.

****

*

Steve is in full creation mode, so Bucky barely gets to see him. It was like that even in high school; when inspiration struck, it could be weeks before Steve emerged from whatever he was working on, blinking like a man blinded by the sun and completely dehydrated. It's only a few more weeks until that big gallery opening that he's been freaking out about all summer. Bucky doesn't want to push, but he also really wants to have that conversation that Natasha had told him to.

Life slips back to being the way it was before Steve showed up again, and it's a little unnerving how easy the transition is.

He wakes up and goes to the gym, goes to work. Catches shit from Nat, terrorizes the dish boy. Goes home and has a beer with Clint, stays awake for far too long. Smokes cigarettes on the fire escape and repeat.

It's not a bad life, he thinks. It's not the worst thing that could happen to him. Natasha is talking about making him and Clint partners in the restaurant again, and that's nice. He's not sure if he wants to buy into it, though. He loves the food he grew up with, that's true. But he also has a soft spot for noodle bars and sushi places, upscale Italian and off-beat sandwiches. He's worked at all kinds of places, and he's just not sure what he wants to put roots into. If he wants to open his own place.

Clint was right when he said that Bucky's realizing that he's not going to be young forever, but he's not quite sure if he's not already old.

It's just that making a decision about his future seems arbitrary when everything about his life seems up in the air.

He thinks that he and Steve would do alright as a couple. He also thinks that he would be able to find someone else, eventually, if things went sour. He still feels bad for the conversation he had with Steve on his birthday; it wasn't fair of him to try and guilt Steve into making a decision. But hell, if he's trying to keep everything fair –

It's really not like Steve to keep two people on a line like that.

Bucky is well aware that he brings the worst out in Steve sometimes. When they argue, it's bloody. It's hurtful. And maybe Steve brings out the best in Bucky – makes him remember that he's not just a kitchen bro with negative personality. Makes him remember the things that he loves like books and math and dogs and hiking; the things that make him a person and not just a background character in everyone else's life.

This is what Clint had been trying to tell him, he realizes three months too late.

He has to sort out what he wants his future to look like. Bucky Barnes, restauranteur and good boyfriend. Bucky Barnes, content with mediocrity and perpetual mistress. Bucky Barnes, knocked down four times, got up five – or laid in the dirt and accepted that he should just stay there?

Steve would have something to say about that.

Back when they were kids, Steve got shoved around more often than not. He was just so _small_ ; shorter and skinnier than the other kids by a mile, but he'd never just _let_ anyone walk all over him. Some kid would shove him to try and get a better copy of a textbook or earlier access to their stacks of graded papers (this being public school, after all), and Steve would shove back. Somebody would call him a name at the food court in the mall and he would demand that they come and say it to his face. If anyone threw a punch, he would punch them back – never very effectively, but he still would. If Bucky was around, it always fell to him to finish a fight, because Steve would keep swinging until he physically couldn't anymore. There were plenty of days when Bucky dragged Steve back to his house to clean him up before Sarah saw, days when Nadja would fuss and cry and yell at Bucky for not looking out for Steve better.

But there was no looking out for Steve; he never compromised. He would tell kids off for picking on _other_ people, let alone himself. He never threw the first punch, and he rarely threw the last one – but he wouldn't stand for anyone getting put down.

And Bucky – Bucky just flowed along in his wake, coolly picking off the jerks that would really mess with Steve until finally, by their final years of high school, there really wasn't anyone who _would_ mess with Steve. Everyone knew that if you picked on Steve, the whooping you caught from Bucky was swift, painful, and retributive.

No one needed to look out for Steve these days. Not with arms like tree trunks and all those damn tattoos. Besides, artists ruled the roost these days. All those weird kids in high school were the cool kids everyone wanted to hang out with now. Steve doesn't need Bucky anymore.

It's a sobering realization. Steve doesn't _need_ Bucky anymore, and maybe he's only sticking around for the nostalgia.

But that's also not like Steve. He might have changed quite a bit in the time they were apart, but not _that_ much. He'd never politely spend time with someone out of pity. Pity isn't something Steve is capable of feeling. Just compassion.

Still, the thought fucks Bucky up for a few days. He drops a lot more things at work, breaks a few dishes and swears in as many languages as he can remember. He hasn't seen Steve in practically two weeks. They've just spoken through text messages, and they're not overly affectionate in their perfunctory check-ins. Vague and simple. Bucky hasn't confirmed this theory, but he's sure it's to keep Sharon from getting too suspicious if she ever went through Steve's phone. He's rarely been in the presence of both of them at the same time, mostly because he gets a little jealous but also – he thinks – because he and Steve are a little handsy with one another and it doesn't always look right.

He's in the middle of a streak of feeling used and gross and sad, sitting at home alone on another Monday afternoon. Clint is staying at Kate's and he took the dog. Bucky's always sort of pissed when Clint takes the dog. Maybe he should get a cat – someone who'll act all haughty and snide when guests are around but the minute the door closes, they're all over you. But he already has Natasha and Steve, so why bother? He laughs to himself, pressing the heel of his palm into his eye.

His phone starts buzzing, skittering across the coffee table.

He knows it's Steve before he even looks. Knowing who's calling him has always been a talent of his. Sure enough, when he leans over and picks his phone up, Steve's picture is splashed across the screen.

“Hey,” he says, trying not to sound overly excited or overly depressed.

“Hi,” Steve says, his voice jumbled by the wind blowing into his phone. Bucky hasn't realized it was a particularly windy day, but he also hasn't been outside yet. “What are you doing?”

“Uh.” Bucky stares at the full pack of cigarettes and the library books sitting on his coffee table. “Nothing important.”

“Good. I just got finished up at the studio and I stopped and picked up some expensive cheese.”

“Oh, I get it. You just want me to make you sandwiches. Clever, though. Luring me in with cheese.”

“Sam says it's how you catch white people.”

“Well, Sam's not wrong.” Bucky laughs. “I was just thinking about you.”

“Oh? Gross things?”

“No, just deciding that I shouldn't bother getting a cat when I have friends like you and Nat.”

“Is that a compliment?”

“No.”

“That's what I thought. Come over and grill me a cheese.”

“So pushy. So demanding. Steven, what am I supposed to do with you?”

“I guess take care of me until my asthma comes back and I die.”

Bucky pauses, lips pursed. That actually doesn't sound horrible, with the exception of the dying part.

“Buck?” Steve asks. “You still there?”

“Yeah, sorry. I thought I dropped the cherry off my cigarette,” he lies. “All clear. I'll be there in a few minutes.”

“Take your time,” Steve says. “I'm only barely there.”

“Cool. See you soon.”

“Bye, I like you sometimes.”

“Yeah, okay,” Bucky laughs. He hangs up the phone to Steve laughing, too.

The line of traffic stopped in front of Steve's house is insane, as always. He has to wait for five minutes, people behind him honking and no one in the opposite lane letting him through to get into the driveway. Steve wouldn't have this problem if he has just moved ten minutes up the road to that terrible neighborhood – the one where Bucky wiped out walking one night and ripped his knees open and had to call Natasha to come get him.

But, c'est la vie. Steve likes his house and his upstairs neighbors are quiet and he likes his roommate. So there's always that. The front door is unlocked, which means that Steve is definitely already home. Bucky lets himself in, whistling loudly to let his presence be known.

Steve is in the kitchen, putting something away in the fridge.

“Hey,” Bucky says, dropping his keys on the counter. “What kind of cheese did you get?”

“Brie,” Steve says, standing up and closing the fridge. There's ink smudged on his fingertips and paint on his jeans, splashes of watercolor on his white-shirt. “Some fancy cheddar and a smoked bleu.”

“I can't put all those together. The bleu is going to totally overpower everything. Like bacon. Haven't we talked about this?”

Steve laughs, shrugging as he walks over to Bucky, pressing a lingering kiss to his brow. “And since when do I listen to you about anything?”

“Well, you _did_ buy a cast iron skillet. So there's that.” Bucky parks himself on a stool, tugging Steve closer. Grill me a cheese, his ass. He reaches up with his good hand, tugging on the hair that's kicking out over Steve's ear. “You need a cut, bud.”

“I can clip it later,” he says offhandedly, settling himself between Bucky's thighs. “I can clip yours later, too.”

“Nope,” Bucky laughs. “I like it long.”

“Still can't decide if I hate it.” Steve smiles. It's a private smile; not the big broad one that he gives to strangers to be friendly and not the exaggerated, fake one he makes in most photos. It's sort of amused, half-there. A wry twist. Bucky knows that smile means he's about he get laid, and it makes him squirm a little in his seat.

He wants to have that conversation – he wants to throw everything on the table and tell Steve to break up with Sharon. Focus doesn't come easy with Steve's mouth on his throat, hands in his hair and breath starting to come in shallow gasps.

They're so focused on each other that they don't hear the door open.

If it'd been Wanda, they would have been fine.

God damn Steve leaving the door unlocked when he's home.

Sharon doesn't say anything for a long time, and they don't even notice her until Bucky opens his eyes and punches Steve in the back of the head.

“What was that for?” Steve pulls back, rubbing the spot Bucky punched him in. “That's your metal arm, asshole.”

Bucky can't actually bring himself to say anything, so he slinks off the stool and grabs for his keys. Steve's face contorts in a rictus of hurt and confusion, and then Sharon clears her throat.

Steve turns, mouth agape, hands outstretched like he's going to fall.

“I'm gonna go,” Bucky says flatly.

“You do that,” Sharon says. “I need to have a conversation with my boyfriend.”

Bucky holds himself back from saying something petty about how Steve was his boyfriend first – though he wants to badly enough to taste it like iron in the back of his throat.

He just leaves.

He has to pull over halfway through driving home – he hasn't had a panic attack like this in a while, and it seems to have built up in intensity in their absence.

Later, Steve texts him – just a single word.

_Sorry._

Bucky is maybe not the smartest man, not the most adept at plumbing the depths of emotion and perhaps only skilled at manipulation and outbursts, but he can read between the lines. He knows when he's been dumped for someone else. And really, he should have seen it coming. Steve and Sharon are amazing together; Bucky was always the extra. Of course they're going to try and tough it out and Steve's infidelity was just a hiccup on their road to white picket fences and babies and police benefit dinners.

Why would anyone want Bucky, anyway? One-armed fuck up that he is.

He calls off of work for the next three days and spends the time in his room, only emerging to use the bathroom or scavenge for snacks.

When he finally comes out and goes back to his life, everything seems pale and bland.

*****

Steve's gallery opening comes and goes and Bucky works through it, attacking mounds of potatoes and piles of roasted beets with a ferocity he hasn't had since he first started working in kitchens. He shoves the dish boy out of the way and cleans up his own messes. He doesn't speak to anyone except Natasha, and then only in clipped Russian two or three word answers. She's probably been to see Steve's show, but she doesn't say anything.

It's not like Bucky had promised to go, or anything. It was just implied.

Shakespeare in the Park must be eating up all of Steve's free time anyway.

So he works. He sleeps. He gives up on his plot in the community garden when he discovers an infestation of aphids has eaten essentially everything he spent so many hours trying to grow. Squirrels made off with his strawberries. His herbs are wilted and brown. He shouldn't have bothered, he realizes. Everything he puts even a little bit of effort into is bound to fail. The only thing he's good at is cooking. Gardening, reliability and relationships – he's no good for any of those. Ever.

No one texts him, so he has no one to disappoint by not answering.

He stews in his own grotesque version of self-pity cobbled together out of rum and cigarettes for about two weeks before he decides that he wants to torture himself a little bit more. He wants to go see the other thing that dragged Steve away from him so much that summer. The other thing that's so much more important than him. The gallery has regular hours, after all. He ties his hair back and steals a pair of Clint's too-small shoes and goes for a walk.

It's gotten almost unbearably hot during his self-imposed exile. Summer is really here, and it's beating down on his head. He curses his propensity towards black clothing as he finally reaches his destination, drenched in sweat and probably smelling like roadkill.

There's a woman at the desk in oversized glasses and a wrap dress, complete with a cardigan. It's frigid inside the building; Bucky can imagine his mother complaining that this is how people get sick. The woman gives him a booklet that details everything from the latest opening; some things might not be in there, but if he's interested in a piece that's not listed, she'd be happy to help. He thanks her and hangs onto the booklet, tucking it in his pocket as he walks through a set of glass and polished metal doors into the gallery proper.

It's one of those exposed brick and white walled kind of places and there are large installations hanging from the ceiling – wires and strips of fabric. Too much modern art for his taste, though he gets a kick out of some cakes made out of fabric and a scale model of a motorcycle crafted out of what appears to be soap. There are very few pieces that bore him, at least – only a few sets of paintings that are so bland and inoffensive, they would best be suited to hanging in a doctor's office. The gallery is relatively small, but there's a set of stairs at the back – they lead up to a small landing and back down. That's it.

There's a matted and framed piece of paper washed over with purple hanging on the wall that's created by the stairs, and Bucky recognizes the handwriting.

 

  
**ELEGY/INVICTUS**  
STEVE ROGERS

 

He realizes that he has to go up the stairs to look at the piece. Lazy as he's feeling right now, he didn't make the trek out here just to stare at a title card. Fine. Bucky will play ball – always will for Steve, it seems. He goes around to climb the stairs and counts out eight frames, hung at intervals that require a bit of a walk between them. Forcing the viewer to only consider one work at a time. Such a Steve thing to do.

He plans to breeze by, take a look and get the hell out – but he reconsiders after looking at the first piece.

It's a small canvas; maybe half the size of a standard sheet of paper, split down the middle by slightly wobbling line of black ink. The subject matter is mostly that same black ink with splatters and drops of watercolor mixed in. The left side is labeled ELEGY, and the right is labeled INVICTUS, both at the top.

A beautiful rendering of Sharon from the shoulders up, splashed over with shades of pink and red, is on the left. Similarly, Bucky is on the right, but his colors are blue and green. Bucky blinks at his ink and paper self, disbelieving at first. But it's definitely him. He looks better than he does in life, all of the lines starting to form in his forehead softened and his mouth curved slightly upward. Sharon looks better too – that slightly pinched quality about her face is gone, smoothed over. There's minimal shading, but it just looks – right. It looks perfect. This is how Steve sees them: Sharon is an elegy, a lament. Bucky is Invictus – an ode to a feeling that not many people can explain, a song to celebrate the resilience of human nature.

It's a little embarrassing, for someone to publicly label him that.

All the pieces are roughly the same size, and the next one is split the same way. Titled FIRST DATE – a beautiful line drawing of a single piece of sushi on the left, a dirty baseball on the right. Bucky has to stifle a laugh. They had played catch in Steve's backyard when they were forced to have a playdate together all those years ago. More than twenty years now, he realizes.

He walks over to the next painting, not knowing quite how to feel. He's become a project, reduced down to lines and paint, stripped of his third dimension. Maybe the point, he thinks, is that Steve really did turn juggling his relationships into his summer project. Bucky can't triangulate on anything other than the mild sting of embarrassment he feels at being labeled like this, so he just keeps looking. The second painting is titled TOKENS, and has a mobile of paper cranes on Sharon's side and the watercolor case on Bucky's.

The paintings get a little more intimate as they go on. In COFFEE, Sharon holds a Starbucks cup in one hand and her keys in the other, while Bucky is poised at his kitchen counter, boxers slung low on his hips and a chipped mug of coffee held to his lips. BORROWED features Sharon and Bucky both in the same sweater of Steve's, and Bucky has to admit that she pulls it off better. SUNDAY is probably the best one – third to last and framed with a pale blue mat, instead of a black one. Sharon sleeps under the covers, curled up tight under Steve's comforter and taking up minimal space. Bucky lays sprawled across the same bed, taking up at much space as he might physically be able to, one leg rucked up over the covers and his arm under the pillow.

MIDNIGHT is his favorite, though. It's done on black paper with white chalk (he thinks – Bucky is not good with art) and in it, Sharon holds a sheet up to her chest as she leans over to find something on the floor. Bucky's side is just a view of his back, hair falling out of its elastic and hands – one prosthetic and one flesh – clasped behind his neck. He can _see_ it, here. The legitimacy of Steve's relationship with Sharon and the illicit nature of his with Bucky. Sharon is confident. She knows that she belongs in that bed, looking for her things on that floor. Bucky is in anguish, torn between staying and going.

Bucky finally takes the booklet out of his pocket, flipping past the biographies and descriptions of the modern artists who slapped together wires and the older, staid looking individuals who painted those dentist's waiting room monstrosities. Steve looks good in his picture, at least. The description of his installation is sort of vague and reads like something Wanda wrote when Steve got frustrated with himself:

_A project about the futility of comparison, told through the struggle to choose between two good things. A lesson in the art of yearning and the pain of decision._

There's no fucking way Steve wrote that.

He notices, though, that there are only seven paintings listed in the book.

He frowns as he walks over to the last piece, fully prepared for an empty slot or even just a framed clipping of Steve's bio. He feels the same gut-clenching confusion he felt when he saw Steve again for the first time, his brain taking a few minutes to whir to life and realize what he's looking at.

It's just an ink drawing of Bucky in profile, watercolor fireworks splashed over. He thinks Steve's done a good job with it, actually. He looks younger and older at the same time – and much more handsome. There's no title on it, but he notices something written at the bottom, small and scrawled.

_if you'll still have me._

Jesus.

What's he supposed to say to that?

He walks down the staircase at the end of the landing, fingers itching for a cigarette.

Steve Rogers is not the answer to all of his problems, and has for the most part been the beginning of a large part of them. But Bucky is old enough now to know that relationships are not the cure for all that ails you. When someone loves you, you don't suddenly stop being a giant fuck-up. You don't lose your anxiety or depression. Someone just happens to love you despite all the ugly shit.

He walks past the soap motorcycle and the fabric cakes, the depressing landscapes and the wire sculptures. He walks past the woman at the desk, who's too busy answering phones to thank him for visiting. He lights a cigarette as soon as he gets outside, pulling his phone out. He doesn't unlock it – just stares at it.

He really should call Steve.

At the very least, they should talk.

He puts his phone back in his pocket and walks home, chain smoking two more cigarettes before he gets there. He doesn't think he's equipped to deal with this right now. If Steve wants to talk, well – Steve can call him.

*****

Bucky is in a daze, of sorts. It feels like he's suffered a head injury. That's the only way he can describe it – his mind feels thick and foggy. He's not entirely sure that he should be handling knives. He churns out plate after plate of food, moving entirely on muscle memory. Carb, protein, veggie. Ding. Next plate. Carb, protein, veggie. Ding. Where's Kate? Who cares.

He gets a ticket and it gives him pause.

_Chef's choice._

His mouth twitches.

He thinks about what's easiest – what's closest to reach. Nat is out in the dining room, shuffling cakes around to make the case look full until Clint gets there tomorrow morning to whip up something new. There's probably a _pirohzki_ he can reheat somewhere, but he feels like that's not really the chef's choice – it's just laziness. He sighs, pulling out a slab of smoked brisket from the steamer. A sandwich won't take much out of him, probably.

He smacks the bell as Natasha comes back into the kitchen, adjusting her bandanna. There's a sort of smug smile on her face.

“What?” he asks, trudging over to the printer to see the next ticket.

“You should take that sandwich out yourself,” she says, reaching into one of the under-the-counter refrigerators for a bucket of the sauerkraut she brines by the tens of pounds on Sunday nights. “Table four.”

“Where's Kate?”

“She wanted a break.”

“You never give us breaks.”

She turns around, looking slightly murderous. “You get cigarette breaks, Kate gets tampon breaks. I treat you all the same.”

Her accent, he notes, is always sharper when she's angry with him.

He grumbles, bitching in Romanian as he grabs the plate. Table four. The stupid table in the window. Everyone wants to sit in the window, so everyone who passes by knows that they're eating relatively expensive, worldly and hip food. Natasha has made it so that the smallest table is up there, but people still want it. He takes the plate up, fully prepared to have to trade his back of house attitude for a front of house smile.

God, he hates people.

He all but throws the plate on the table when he sees that it's Steve sitting there.

It's actually a pretty good move, on Steve's part. He knows that Bucky loves Natasha too much to act up in the restaurant, even if he badly wants to tip the plate onto the floor and sock Steve in the jaw and make a scene – he won't. Nat would just be so unhappy.

So he drops the plate, a little unceremoniously, but as politely as he can manage.

Steve stares up at him.

Bucky wipes his hands on his apron, expression withering. “I would have spit in it,” he says, “if I had known it was for you.”

Steve doesn't laugh.

“Okay,” Bucky says, turning on his heel. “Tip your waitress.”

He hasn't even made it two steps before Steve reaches out and snags his hand. “Sit? Just for a minute.”

“I'm at work.”

“I know. I saw Nat, I asked her if it was alright if I stole you for a few minutes. She can handle it.”

Bucky considers this. He turns back to stand by Steve's table, but he won't sit down. Arms crossed, leaning against the window, sweating and smelling like cabbage and kitchen grease, he stares Steve down.

“So?” Bucky says, gesturing for Steve to get a move on.

“Why are you like this?” Steve asks, rubbing his temples.

“My dad didn't love me enough,” Bucky jokes. “I've been hurt too many times. I can do a Nick Cage impression – I lost my hand! Except it was the entire arm.”

“I really don't like it when you use sarcasm to deflect a serious conversation.”

“I really don't like it when you lead me on for several months and then make a move like you're leaving me for someone else. Or actually do it. Or not do it and then paint your feelings for me in a massive art installation and expect me to get the message. The romanticism is nice, Steve, but I'm a realist.”

“You're an asshole.”

“And you're sort of a love slut. We can have this argument for several years and neither one of us would be right.”

Steve sighs, pushing the plate away from himself.

“I know this is the point in the conversation that you would kiss me and I would forget about everything,” Bucky says wryly, “if we were in private.”

“There's a reason I did this at your work,” Steve says. “So we wouldn't get all that mixed up.”

“Well, I said what I have to say. So go on.”

“I think we should give this a shot.”

“Is that because Sharon broke up with you and you're sad now?”

“No. We talked about maybe trying to make it work. She was hurt and shocked, but she really thought that if what you and I had was just a physical thing, we could work something out. She's a modern woman, she can dig a poly relationship. Or an open one. Or we could expand our horizons. Whatever. That kind of thing.”

“So now you want me to be a sex object in a three way relationship?”

“Will you shut up and let me finish?”

“Maybe.”

“Stop it,” Steve snaps. Bucky purses his lips, but stays quiet. “So I called it quits. Because it's not just physical for you and me and it never has been. You're my best friend. You're my --”

“Oh, Jesus, don't say brother, you know that weirds me out.”

“-- brother, yeah. And you might be the love of my life or something like that, too.”

Bucky sighs. Steve sits there expectantly, guileless and sweet.

Fucking Steve Rogers.

“Go home, Steve,” Bucky says, rubbing his face.

Steve looks crushed, defeated. Maybe a little humiliated. He looks at the sandwich on his plate like he's going to ask for a to-go box or maybe just shot-gun the whole thing in one go. Bucky's hand is already digging around in his pockets, looking for his keys. It takes him a minute to wiggle them out of his chef's pants, and another few seconds to unclip the house key from his car keys.

He drops the key on the table.

“I need that back, though, so make a copy,” he says. “And if you're there alone, you have to take Lucky out for walks.”

Steve stares at the key sitting on the table, startled and amazed, mouth gaping open.

“Well?” Bucky says. “I'll see you after work, yeah?”

Steve's face softens and he stands up to press a quick kiss to Bucky's cheek. “Yeah, I'll see you after work, Buck.”

He returns to work, and – miracle of miracles – goes home to find Steve on the couch, covered in paint and scraps of gaffing tape, smiling and watching television.

It's quite a sight, and one he'd be happy to go one seeing for as long as possible.


End file.
